Record highs were reached on Friday due to the intense heat in the West, and some areas are predicted to see above-average temperatures this weekend.
The National Weather Service in Oxnard, California, achieved its own record high for the day of 99. Hollywood Burbank Airport in the Los Angeles region equaled its all-time high temperature with a measurement of 114.
According to the report, Downtown Los Angeles equaled its record high for the day at 111. According to weather service figures, Santa Ana (113), Newport Beach (95), and Ramona (114) in Orange County and San Diego County established new records for the date.
The morning low temperature of 93 degrees at Sky Harbor International Airport was the warmest September day on record, according to the Phoenix weather service office.
With a high of 109 on Friday, Yuma, Arizona, which has kept records going back to 1878, broke its previous record of days with highs above 100 degrees, marking 100 days of triple-digit highs this summer, according to the Phoenix office.
Although Death Valley recorded 119 degrees on Friday, the weather agency said it wasn’t a record. Several inland locales in the Pacific Northwest—from Spokane, Washington, to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho—recorded 90-degree temperatures, as per the weather service’s Spokane office.
The hot wave was first expected to cause heat advisories through Friday, but some forecasts have extended them throughout the weekend and even Monday.
Through the weekend, 50 million people are expected to receive heat advisories, according to NBC News forecasts. A top level extreme heat warning and an excessive heat watch are issued by the National Weather Service when there is a serious risk to human life and when temperatures are expected to climb but the exact date is unknown.
Maps and statistics from the weather service indicate that a region from Long Beach, California, almost to San Luis Obispo County is under an excessive heat warning. At 8 p.m., excessive heat advisories were set to expire for a large portion of the remaining Southern California, encompassing the counties of San Diego, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino.
At 10 p.m. on Friday, these advisories were supposed to end for the eastern part of Oregon.
Utility companies received “restricted maintenance operations” requests from the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s electrical system, asking them to forego planned maintenance from Wednesday through Friday between midday and ten o’clock in the evening.
The purpose of the requests is to guarantee that no utility provider would be offline in the event of a heat wave’s heavy demand. Otherwise, Friday’s demand was below capacity and no voluntary conservation measures under the FlexAlert program were anticipated.
Through email, Vonette Fontaine, a spokesman for Cal-ISO, stated, “The grid is stable and no FlexAlerts are planned.”
The Pacific’s cool effect is being blocked throughout the West by a high pressure system over the Southwest’s arid region, which is warming the air. According to the meteorological service, the system will linger until Saturday before beginning to move east on Sunday.
“Temperatures should decrease across the West Sunday into Monday as the ridge shifts east over the Central United States, and scattered light showers and storms will be possible as a weak upper level wave moves across the region,” it said in a forecast discussion on Friday.
Forecasters with NBC News stated that 5 million people, from east Texas to northern Florida, were on flood warning due to thunderstorms caused by a persistent storm front that was predicted to continue soaking states along the Gulf Coast this weekend.
A modest storm front is coming in over the Pacific Northwest, but forecasters in sections of Southern California indicated the heat will last through Monday and probably longer.
As wind blows from east to west and heats the air as it moves from higher altitudes, including mountains, to the shore, the high pressure system is counteracting the ocean’s typically cooling effect.
Federal forecasts stated that a slight rain front that may offer some relief to certain areas of the West is too far north to do so for Southern California.
According to meteorological service meteorologist Joe Sirard, “the offshore flow does appear to linger in this area.” “We’re continuing the hot weather over this area.”
According to Sirard, the possibility of onshore winds returning on Wednesday, when the chilly Pacific breeze cools the region, represents hope for Southern California.
“By then, we might be a little below normal temperature,” he stated.
Heat waves have become increasingly regular, prolonged, and severe in recent years, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, and these factors together constitute a “indicator” of climate change or global warming.
The summer of 2024 was the warmest on record for the Northern Hemisphere, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. It even surpassed the summer of previous year.
