Another day has gone by in Phoenix where the July temperature has reached at least 110. Night time temperatures are not helping either.
The Phoenix Valley has had more than a week of temperatures that didn’t go below 90 at night, breaking a record, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Salerno, who called it “pretty miserable when you don’t have any recovery overnight.”
Phoenix has hit a high of 119 degrees more than once in July. It has been 120 days without measurable rainfall at Phoenix Sky Harbor, the sixth longest stretch of dry weather since records have been kept, according to the National Weather Service Phoenix office.
The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community on the eastern edge of the Phoenix Valley asked its citizens to avoid the outdoors between 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. for much of the week. On its Facebook page, it shared tips on staying safe in the heat.
The Phoenix Indian Center shared cooling station information on its social media pages. The City of Phoenix was offering free rides to cooling centers by calling 2-1-1 Arizona.
Meanwhile, Death Valley in California is flirting with record high temperatures that were expected to reach a staggering 125 degrees on July 17. In Texas, crushing heat is raising concern for families with loved ones in state prisons that lack air conditioning. One woman blames her son’s death on excessive heat.
Storms dumped up to two months’ worth of rain over a couple of days in parts of the Northeast region, surpassing the amount that fell when Tropical Storm Irene blew through in 2011, causing major flooding. Officials have called last week’s flooding Vermont’s worst natural disaster since floods in 1927. A tornado has heavily damaged a pharmaceutical plant in North Carolina on Wednesday as part of a string of extreme weather events plaguing the U.S.
Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week raised their coral bleaching warning system to Alert Level 2 for the Keys, their highest heat stress level out of five. That level is reached when the average water surface temperature is about 1.8 degrees above the normal maximum for eight straight weeks.
Up north, Canada is experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons with only one fifth of its active 900 fires being considered under control.The Environmental Protection Agency says extensive swaths of the northern United States are experiencing unhealthy air quality as smoke from the wildfires pushes the air quality index into the red zone.
The Wildfire season is displacing Indigenous communities from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, blanketing them in thick smoke, destroying homes and forests and threatening important cultural activities like hunting, fishing and gathering native plants.
In Alaska, records of a different sort are being set.
In most of southern Alaska, where about half the state’s population lives, summer got off to a wet and chilly start. Locals were saying they could count the sunny days on one hand until the sun came out the past few days.
National Weather Service meteorologist Christopher Quesada said this has been the wettest summer in Anchorage since 1952, with 4.5 inches of precipitation from June 1 to July 17. “That is about 2.4 times the normal amount, which is 1.85 (inches) for that period,” he said.
And it’s been colder than usual. “Anchorage for example, has been 2.4 degrees below normal,” he said.
It’s having its effects.
Laurie Stuart is executive director for the Tyonek Tribal Conservation District. Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the district serves Dena’ina Athabascan and other villages across Cook Inlet from Anchorage. The main village it serves, Tyonek, is 40 miles south of Anchorage and accessible only by boat or small planes.
“When there is low cloud cover or a lot of rain or high winds, flights are unavailable. And sometimes the weather really changes during the afternoon as we might be able to get out (to the village), but then we can’t get back in (to Anchorage). So we’ve just seen a reduction in the number of days we’ve been able to get people out to do the field work (on fish and game habitat) or to work in the garden,” said Stuart.
Cayley Eller, Tyonek Grown program manager, oversees farming in Tyonek. She said they’re seeing big delays in crop growth.
Normally by now, they’d be harvesting vegetables such as lettuce, kale, radishes, scallions and rhubarb. “And then coming down the pike we’ve got more onions, a lot of brassicas —broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage— (and) carrots, beets, celery, tomatoes, cucumbers. So we’re growing quite a variety and then have a lot of potatoes to harvest in the fall.”
She’s concerned that if the cool weather continues, vegetables may not ripen until mid-August. By then, their six 14-to-18-year-old farm interns will be back in school.
They’ll earn less money, and, Eller said, “they don’t get to see the fruit of all of their hard work. So that can be challenging, keeping up the momentum of the garden (in coming years).”
The lack of produce also affects the Elders Lunch Program, school lunches, what the district can sell at the local farmers market, and the free produce boxes it plans to give away.
There’s one upside to southern Alaska’s wet summer: as of July 17, wildfires have burned 1,769 acres in Alaska compared to more than two million acres of forest by the same time last year.
Back in the Lower 48, Montana is heating up with heat and wind advisories, according to the National Weather Services webpage.
In eastern parts of the state, Big Horn County, home to the Crow Nation, the temperatures have been reaching the high 90s and are expected to hit the 100s during the weekend.
The heat spike is something that meteorologist Julie Arthur with the Billings National Weather Service said is hot, but normal with a chance of setting a record next week.
“If we just look at Monday, We have a forecast high of 101, but the record is still higher than that. It’s 105, so not quite near the record yet,” said Arthur. “Then we actually go out to Tuesday and the forecast high is 100 degrees. The record high is only 98 so if that forecast is correct, we will beat the record. But I will say there’s a big caveat and that’s the last day of the forecast period. It’s way out there and things can change.”
For western Montana, the Flathead valley has seen its temperatures increase this month with the hottest weather aiming to be in the higher 90s this weekend and lasting into the beginning of next week.
Meteorologist Ryan Leach said that these are the hottest and driest conditions of the year so far. A pressure release is expected to level out the weather next week, which brings some worry of the wind.
“We are expecting to have, we call it ‘breakdown of the ridge pattern’ come through early next week, Monday and Tuesday. So that should help the temperatures recover back down a little bit, said Leach. “But at that point, the main concern is gonna be, we’ll see a little bit of an increase in wind and after such a dry period we become concerned about fire weather and its impacts with wildfires with that.”
SUPPORT INDIGENOUS JOURNALISM. CONTRIBUTE TODAY.
In the past few years, record heat waves have become the new norm across the country. The pacific northwest has been no exception.
A few decades ago, air conditioning in Portland was practically unheard of. The region was known for the sunny-yet-mild summers. Now, summer time is accompanied by the race to buy fans and portable AC units before the summer heat hits.
In 2021, temperatures across the region reached as high as 118 degrees in an extreme heat event known as the “heat dome.”
Though this summer has yet to provide any days quite so hot, in May this year, an early heat wave struck Portland with temperatures hitting a record-breaking 93 degrees.
Temperatures of 90 degrees plus, sometimes lasting for a week or more, are common this summer.
In response to increased heat waves the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) started Cooling Portland: A PCEF-funded climate resilience program in 2022.
The goal of the project is to reduce heat related risk in vulnerable communities, installing portable air conditioning units with priority given to low-income people and people of color.
“The extreme heat events of June 2021 were consistent with the worst-case climate modeling for the Pacific Northwest,” said Elizabeth Stover, senior communications strategist for PCEF. “It was clear that vulnerable Portlanders need access to cooling systems.”
The overall goal of the program is to distribute and install 15,000 units by 2027. To date, the program has installed over 5,600 units since it began, with over 2,500 installed already this year.
Two new Native-focused Community Distribution Partners have hopped on board this year: the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) and Northwest Native Chamber.
NAYA is also working to distribute filtered box fans to community members, prioritizing elders, according to Ann Takamota, director of development and communications for NAYA.
“We are experiencing a new climate reality where hotter summers are predicted to be more frequent,” said Stover. “Cost is often a barrier for people accessing cooling, and this program provides low-income Portlanders with efficient, portable cooling equipment.”
The Associated Press, Joaqlin Estus in Anchorage, JoVonne Wagner in Missoula, Montana and Nika Bartoo-Smith in Portland, Oregon have contributed to this report.
The Associated Press, Joaqlin Estus in Anchorage, JoVonne Wagner in Missoula, Montana, Kalle Benallie in New Mexico and Nika Bartoo-Smith in Portland, Oregon have contributed to this report.
Like this story? Support our work with a $5 or $10 contribution today. Contribute to the nonprofit ICT. Sign up for ICT’s free newsletter.