What is a heated dome? : The weather phenomenon that threatens the United States.

Scorching temperatures caused by a ‘heat dome’ have overloaded the Texas power grid and threaten to reach record highs in the state before spreading to other parts of the United States over the next week, putting more people at risk.

“Going forward, this heat will spread … north into Kansas City and all of Oklahoma, into the Mississippi Valley … into the far western Florida Panhandle and parts of western Alabama” as it remains over Texas, said National Weather Service chief meteorologist Bob Oravec.

Record high temperatures of around 43 degrees Celsius are forecast for parts of West Texas on Monday, with no relief expected before the July 4 holiday, Oravec said.

Cori Iadonisi of Dallas simply summed up the weather: “It’s too hot here.

Iadonisi, 40, said she often urges local friends to visit her home state of Washington to beat the heat in the summer.

“You can’t go out,” Iadonisi said of the hot months in Texas. “You can’t go for a walk.”

A heat dome occurs when stationary high pressure with warm air combines with warmer-than-usual air in the Gulf of Mexico and heat from the sun that is almost directly overhead, said Texas state climatologist John Nielsen.

“When we get to the middle of summer, it’s hard to get the hot air out,” said Nielsen-Gammon, a professor at Texas A&M College of Atmospheric Sciences. “If it’s going to happen, this is the time of year it’s going to happen.”

Nielsen-Gammon said July and August don’t get as much sun because the sun recedes on the summer solstice, which was Wednesday.

“A bit of an unusual thing about this heat wave is that we had quite humid April and May, and usually that extra humidity acts as an air conditioner,” Nielsen-Gammon explained. “But the air overhead is so hot that it couldn’t stop the heat wave from happening and actually raised the humidity a bit.”

El calor intenso por segunda semana después de que llevó al operator de la red éléctrica de Texas, el Consejo de Fiabilidad Eléctrica de Texas, a pedir a los residents la semana pasada que reduzcan voluntariamente el uso de energía debido a la demande record anticipated en the system.

The National Integrated Heat Health Information System reports that more than 46 million people from West Texas and Southeast New Mexico to the West Florida Panhandle are currently under heat monitoring. NIHHIS is a joint project of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The heat comes after Sunday’s storms killed three people and left more than 100,000 customers without power in Arkansas and Tennessee and tens of thousands without power in Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to poweroutage.us .

Earlier this month, Oregon’s most populous county filed a $1.5 billion lawsuit against more than a dozen major fossil fuel companies to recoup costs from extreme weather events. related to climate change, including a deadly heat dome in 2021.

Multnomah County, home to Portland and known for its typically mild climate, alleges that combined carbon pollution emitted by businesses was a major factor in causing and worsening record-breaking temperatures in the Pacific Northwest who killed 69 people in that county. .

An attorney for Chevron Corp., Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., said in a statement that the lawsuit makes “new and unsubstantiated claims.”

Extreme heat can be especially dangerous for vulnerable populations, such as children, the elderly, and outdoor workers who need extra support.

Symptoms of heat illness can include profuse sweating, nausea, dizziness and fainting. Some strategies for staying cool include drinking cool fluids, applying a washcloth soaked in cold water to your skin, and spending time in air-conditioned environments.

Cecilia Sorensen, MD, associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Medical Center, said heat-related conditions are becoming a growing public health concern due to global warming.

“There are big issues right now in Texas with energy insecurity and the escalating climate crises that we’re seeing,” Sorensen said. “It’s also one of those examples where if you’re wealthy enough to be able to afford an air conditioner, you’ll be safer, which is a huge climate health equity issue.”

In Texas, average daily high temperatures have risen 2.4 degrees — 0.8 degrees per decade — since 1993, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration amid concerns about human-induced climate change driving a increase in temperatures.