2023-07-16 02:05:53
The extreme heat wave in the southern United States has reached its first peak. In the famous Death Valley – the valley of death – in the state of California, 51 degrees Celsius were measured on Saturday afternoon. A record temperature of 54 degrees is even expected for Sunday. In the national park, which is one of the hottest and driest regions on earth in summer, even the 38 degrees at night don’t cool down.
In southern and central California, maximum temperatures of 41 to 43 degrees were reached on Saturday.
The US weather service had previously warned people in large parts of the country of an “extremely hot and dangerous weekend”. Heat warnings were in place for tens of millions of people in states from Florida in the southeast through Louisiana and Texas to Arizona, Nevada and California in the southwest.
The region has been suffering from intense heat for days and sometimes even weeks. In Arizona’s capital, Phoenix, temperatures have been over 43 degrees for 16 days, and even 47 degrees were measured on Saturday afternoon. The inhabitants of the megacity are called upon to go outside as little as possible because of the “extreme heat”, drink a lot and wear airy clothing.
In Texas, temperatures of over 38 degrees have been measured for 30 consecutive days in the city of El Paso on the border with Mexico. In Houston, the energy supplier Reliant Energy called on people to save electricity from Saturday to Monday from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. because air conditioning systems have massively increased consumption.
And so far, no cooling is in sight: Meteorologists expect that the heat in the western US will last at least all weekend and that it will be even hotter in the south by early next week.
A so-called heat dome has formed over the southern United States, a high pressure area that traps the heat like a lid in a region. Heat is the deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States most years. According to scientists, climate change is making heat waves more frequent, hotter and longer lasting.
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