More than 80 million Americans remain under heat alerts as already dangerously high temperatures continue to rise across the nation.
Temperatures are expected to be in the triple digits across much of the Southwest region this weekend. Excessive heat warnings are in effect for cities including Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Palm Springs, California.
In some portions of South and Southwest Florida, heat alerts have been issued for 20 straight days.
Fox Weather meteorologist Craig Herrera said: “When you think of this stretch, 20 days in a row is something you don’t see that often. Pretty rare, in fact.
“When it’s this hot, and you still have to make it through August, you still have at least another month and a half of hot conditions.”
Relief may arrive for portions of the Mid-South, Southeast and Gulf Coast on Sunday, but excessive heat and humidity will rebuild across the areas later this week.
The heat will begin to build in the middle of the country as an area of high pressure expands and pushes off to the east this week. As it does, temperatures across the Plains and the Midwest start to rise.
Herrera added: “Here’s what’s concerning. This area of high pressure, this big bubble, starts to blow up and cover a huge chunk of the country.”
Temperatures in the Plains will approach or exceed 100 degrees in some major cities starting on Monday.
Rapid City, South Dakota, for example, will stay in the upper 90s over the next few days, and North Platte, Nebraska, could go above 100 degrees on Monday and Tuesday.
Herrera continued: “Across the Pacific Northwest and across to New England, those are the two spots in the week ahead that will be close to average.
“But this will take us to the end of the month. So, we’ve got a lot more heat to contend with.”
Doctors in the US Southwest have reported a rise in first-, second-, and third-degree contact burn cases amid extreme heat conditions.
The reports of severe burn incidents, some fatal, came from hospitals in Arizona and Nevada, where deaths from heat-related conditions have surged.
Dr Kara Geren, an emergency medicine physician at Valleywise Health in Phoenix, told NBC that burns suffered when people pass out and fall onto superheated outdoor surfaces such as roads or sidewalks “can be very severe and disfiguring to the point where you have to have what’s called a skin graft, where they take skin from other parts of your body and kind of cover it up”.
Her hospital’s burns unit, she said, was “very full. It just keeps going.”
People should take the heat seriously and avoid extended time outdoors. Temperatures and heat indices will reach levels that would pose a health risk and be potentially deadly to anyone without effective cooling and adequate hydration.
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