‘Only going to get hotter’: Heat wave blasts Northwest

SEATTLE — Seattle has only hit 100 degrees three times in recorded history. The National Weather Service says the city could top triple digits several times in the coming days and may eclipse the all-time record of 103 F on Monday.

The Pacific Northwest sweltered as a historic heat wave hit Washington and Oregon, with temperatures in many areas expected to top out up to 30 degrees above normal.

“If you’re keeping a written list of the records that will fall, you might need a few pages by early next week,” NWS Seattle tweeted.

The extreme and dangerous heat was expected to break all-time records in cities and towns from eastern Washington state to southern Oregon as concerns mounted about wildfire risk in a region that’s already experiencing a crippling and extended drought.

Seattle was expected to edge above 100 degrees over the weekend and in Portland, Ore., weather forecasters said the thermometer could soar to 108 by Sunday, breaking an all-time record of 107 set in 1981.

Unusually hot weather was expected to extend into next week for much of the country — as a twin heat wave pounds the Northeast.

The Northwest heat wave sent residents scrambling in a region accustomed to mild summers where many people don’t have air conditioning. Stores sold out of portable air conditioners and fans, some hospitals canceled outdoor vaccination clinics, cities opened cooling centers, baseball teams canceled or moved up weekend games and utilities braced for possible power outages.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee lifted COVID-19 capacity restrictions on publicly owned or operated and nonprofit cooling centers in light of the heat. Capacity is currently limited to 50% until the state fully reopens next Wednesday.

And in Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown suspended capacity limits for movie theaters and shopping malls — places with air-conditioning — as well as swimming pools ahead of a statewide reopening Wednesday.

According to 2019 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, Seattle has the lowest rate of air conditioned homes of any major American city. Only 44% of the homes in the metro area have air conditioning. In the Portland metro area that figure was 79%.

Families lined up in the beating sun for ice cream and a few precious hours at community pools still operating under capacity restrictions due to COVID-19.

Sara Stathos was selling ice cream from inside an air-conditioned food truck in Portland and said the business would shut down over the weekend because the ice cream “basically melts as we hand it to customers” in such hot weather.

The extended “heat dome” was a taste of the future for the Pacific Northwest as climate change reshapes weather patterns worldwide, said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington who studies global warming and its effects on public health.

“We know from evidence around the world that climate change is increasing the frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves. We’re going to have to get used to this going forward. Temperatures are going up and extreme temperatures are going up even faster,” she said.

“I tell my students when they get to be as old as I am, they’re going to look back and think about how nice the summers used to be.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3x0dQqw