We’ll Always Have Heat Records

Temperatures may still be scorching, but hey, at least you probably don’t have to swim in the Seine.

Don’t get used to cooler temperatures

The Midwest cooled off a bit over the weekend — but doesn’t mean extreme temperatures are behind us. More heat is in store this week for the Central Plains and the deep South. A heat dome developing in the Western side of the country will push hot air over to those regions, Bryan Jackson, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told me.

“Cities like Denver, Oklahoma City and Kansas City will have temperatures ranging from 95 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit the rest of the work week. That’s 6 to 12 degrees above historical averages,” Paul Pastelok, a senior meteorologist at Accuweather, told me.

The conditions in the Southern Plains across the Gulf States into the interior Southeast will be even more extreme, as high humidity levels will make already high temperatures in cities like Houston, Memphis, Tennessee, Jackson, Mississippi feel 8 to 10 degrees hotter, Pastelok explained. To be clear, that means heat indexes as high as 110.

Over in the West, the heat will focus over eastern Oregon, southern Idaho, Nevada, and central and southern California. According to Pastelok, Boise, Idaho, will see temperatures above 100 degrees for most of this week — 8 to 14 degrees above historical averages.

Olympians are having more trouble staying cool than winning medals

Beyond sleeping in cardboard beds and swimming in the Seine (which is potentially still full of E.coli), athletes are having to deal with the intense heat in the city.

In 2021, Tokyo became the hottest Olympic Games ever, with daily highs averaging nearly 90 degrees and the heat index soaring well past 113 degrees. While Paris won’t come close to challenging that, it’s still been plenty hot. Temperatures in the French capital reached 97 degrees last Tuesday before settling back into the high 70s over the weekend.

To counter the heat, athletes were taking extra breaks to hydrate, but sometimes not even that was enough. “We were drinking hot water out there,” British tennis player Jack Draper told ABC News. USA gymnast-slash-golden girl Simone Biles also complained about the heat and having to go around in a bus without AC. Spectators also struggled, and volunteers had to use a water hose to spray those in the bleachers at a beach volleyball game.

• Looking Ahead: After a cooler weekend, temperatures in Paris will trend warmer again early this week. The city will likely see temperatures above 86 degrees today and tomorrow, Jason Nicholls, lead international forecaster at Accuweather, told me. That same cycle will repeat again from mid-week through Friday. One spot of good news, though, for those toughing it out in the City of Lights: You’re likely already through the worst of it.

Park Fire rages

The Park Fire is now the fourth largest wildfire in California’s history — and there might still be weeks before it’s quenched. As of this morning, only 31% of the fire had been contained, with one more county being added to the evacuation list. Hundreds of structures have been destroyed, and over 400,000 acres have been burned.

Looking at California’s fire season to date, the numbers are even more shocking. During the summer of 2023, the state responded to 119 wildfire incidents. So far this summer — and remember we still have all of August to go — the state has already responded to 321 wildfires, according to Cal Fire data.

• Looking Ahead: The chances of putting out the Park Fire this week are low, as “precipitation is not in the forecast to help firefighters,” Pastelok told me. Dry thunderstorms and gusty winds coming from the south to southwest predicted for this week will also make the fire harder to contain. New wildfires in the region can also be expected.

“Extended summer” will last into fall

The first couple of weeks of August will continue to see much of the same extreme heat the country has experienced so far this summer, according to Pastelok. In fact, the Southeast looks to be getting even hotter and more humid late this week and into next. In northern California and parts of Oregon, some cooling may happen around the middle of the month, but not enough to end the wildfire season. More significant opportunities for cooler weather in the region won’t start until September — or even October.

Seattle and Portland may get lucky with a more substantial drop in temperatures later in August, but the Northeast will continue hot and humid throughout all of this month. The location of the cooler weather will mostly be determined by storms, Pastelok explained. “If more storms hit the East coast, the cooling will drive into the Midwest,” he said. “If the storms drive into the Gulf, then warmth will remain back to the Midwest and cooling will be more confined to the northern Rockies and Northwest.”

• Looking Ahead: From September through November, meteorologists at AccuWeather expect temperatures to be 1 to 3 degrees above historical averages. The only region that will be spared is the Pacific Northwest, where cooler, wetter weather will pop up earlier. This also means that the risk of extreme weather events, such as tornadoes and wildfires, will continue high through the end of the year.

The coldest place on the planet is not even that cold anymore

Not even Antarctica is safe from bizarre temperatures this summer. Last month, an intense heat wave caused temperatures across the continent to average up to 50 degrees above normal. Temperatures were up 82 degrees from historical readings on some days.

The numbers confirm what climate scientists have been telling us for years: Climate change will be most intensely perceived in the polar regions, making temperatures soar even higher in the rest of the globe. Zeke Hausfather, a researcher at Berkeley Earth, told The Guardian that the heat wave in Antarctica was one of the main factors behind the scorching temperatures in the last few weeks.

Extreme weather sends China from drought to drowning

Now major cities in China are also struggling under boiling heat. Shanghai issued its first red warning alert — the most severe temperature alert in the country — for the year last Thursday; the next day, temperatures along the country’s eastern coast hit 104 degrees. On August 3, the city of Hangzhou faced a high of almost 107 degrees, breaking its previous record set in 2022. Warnings have also been issued for the provinces of Fujian, Anhui, Jiangsu, among others, and intense heat is expected to continue through this week.

In Henan province, which had been battling a severe drought after months of no rain, the situation has taken a turn. In late July, the province was hit by a brutal typhoon, leading to the evacuation of tens of thousands.

This year, China recorded its hottest July in history.