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The latest in a series of severe heat waves to hit the west continues on Monday, although conditions are unlikely to be as extreme as they were over the weekend.
The big picture: The heat, combined with increasing drought and lightning, has ignited more than a million acres of land in California, Oregon, Washington and Canada, with smoke obscuring the skies for thousands of miles.
In numbers : Another in a series of strong areas of high pressure, colloquially known as “thermal domes”, have settled across the west. While not as strong as the event in late June and early July, it still led to record temperatures.
- 107.7 ° F: Hottest Daily Low Temperature registered for the United States, established Sunday in Stovepipe Wells, Calif.
- 117 ° F: All-time high temperature record at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, which was tied on Saturday, by a National Meteorological Service declaration.
- 107 ° F: All-time high temperature record set on July 9 in Grand Junction, Colorado, where the archives date from 1893.
- 150,812 acresSize of the Bootleg, Oregon blaze as of Sunday, after the blaze doubled in size for three consecutive days. The fire was expected to experience “extreme” growth rates as temperatures rose on Sunday afternoon.
- 4000 acresSize of rapidly growing river fire in Mariposa and Madera counties in Calif., Forcing evacuations on Sunday evening.
Threat level: On Sunday, Canada’s Interagency Wildland Fire Center raised its preparedness level to 5 – the top of the scale, noting that “active agencies can take emergency action to support incident operations. “.
- Dozens of forest fires are burning various ecosystems ranging from temperate rainforests to the boreal region surrounding the Arctic.
- The fires in Canada erupted when a massive, slow heat dome stopped over southwestern British Columbia from late June to early July, shattering all-time heat records and killing people. hundreds of people.
- Fire agencies in the United States are at a high level of preparedness due to large wildfires burning in several states. On Saturday, two firefighters working with the Bureau of Land Management to conduct aerial reconnaissance of the Cedar Basin fire in northwestern Arizona died when their plane crashed.
- The Bootleg Fire continues to threaten a key power conduit between the Pacific Northwest and California. Known as Path 66, the high-voltage power lines provide a total of 4,800 megawatts of electricity to the heat-stressed California grid.
- The fire reduced that flow of electricity on Friday and Saturday and could do so again. Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to relieve some of the stress in the network, and a “Flex alert“to save energy is in effect for Monday.
The context: Drought conditions created dry powder keg conditions throughout the West, including high elevation forests, extending the duration of the peak forest fire season.
- In California, twice as many acres have burned so far this year than last year at this point – and 2020 was the worst wildfire year on record in California.
- “The fire behavior we are seeing on the Bootleg Fire is among the most extreme you can find and firefighters are seeing conditions they have never seen before,” said Al Lawson, an incident commander for the fire.
Between the lines: Man-made global warming is a major factor in the severity, longevity and frequency of heat waves in the American West and other parts of the world.
- In addition, studies show that the West experiences more frequent and larger forest fires as climate change alters precipitation patterns and the timing of wet and dry seasons.
- Climate change is also causing more days with extreme fire weather conditions characterized by unusually high temperatures, strong winds and extremely low humidity values.
And after: Heat advisories and warnings in effect for California’s Central Valley, where farm workers have worked in deadly temperatures, continue Monday – but temperatures are expected to be a few degrees cooler than they were over the weekend -end.
- Other parts of the west are also subject to heat warnings.
- The records that fall are probably daily records, rather than all-time milestones.
- However, no end to the hot and dry climate in the West is in sight.
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