A relentless heat wave that has sent temperatures into the triple digits brought Phoenix its 18th consecutive day of high temperatures at or above 110 degrees on Monday, tying a record set in 1974, officials said.
The heat, which put roughly a quarter of the U.S. population under a heat advisory, was expected to continue to envelope the South, the Southwest and South Florida, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 70 million people across the country were facing dangerous levels of heat as of Monday morning, according to a New York Times analysis of current Weather Service advisories and LandScan population data.
The highest temperature ever recorded on Earth is 134 degrees Fahrenheit, or 56.7 Celsius, a reading taken at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, near the border of Nevada and California, in 1913, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather and Climate Extremes Archive.
On Sunday, the temperature there reached 126 degrees at the visitors center at Furnace Creek, according to the Weather Service. As of Monday afternoon, the temperature reached 122.6 degrees.
Record-breaking heat is expected through the middle of the week from Texas to the lower Mississippi Valley, according to the Weather Service.
In South Florida, the Weather Service on Monday also warned of high temperatures in the low 90s, with the heat index expected to approach 105 to 110 degrees. The heat index measures how hot it feels outside, accounting for temperature and humidity.
In Coral Gables, outside of Miami, Travaris Dotson, 47, who works for a traffic control company, was sitting under a tree with co-workers and drinking water to escape the heat.
“I go inside and out of the truck to cool off,” he said. “You have to.”
A few feet away, Raul Roque, a project manager for a construction company, was also taking a break under a tree. A Miami native, Mr. Roque said he could not remember the heat being this bad.
He described it as a dry heat, “coming up from the ground.” To cope, he has been drinking a gallon and a half of water every day, or “twice as much as normal,” to stay hydrated, he said.
For those seeking to cool off, there will be little opportunity to do so in the places hit hardest by the high temperatures, with particularly high daily minimum temperatures.
Heat can be particularly devastating to people who are already suffering from health conditions.
In the Phoenix area, for example, there have been 12 reported heat-related deaths this year through mid-June, and 40 more open cases where heat is being investigated as a factor, according to the Maricopa County medical examiner. And in Texas, more than a dozen heat-related deaths have been recorded so far in 2023, The Associated Press has reported.
In the coming days, temperatures will be highest in the desert of the Southwest, where highs could be in the 110s, and lows only in the 80s and 90s.
To stay safe on extremely hot days, the Weather Service advised people on Monday to drink plenty of fluids, stay in cooler rooms, stay out of the sun and check on relatives and neighbors, especially older people who live alone.
“Wear light-colored clothing,’’ Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service, said on Twitter on Monday. “Loose fitting helps as well.”
Aside from the heat, other parts of the country are facing additional severe weather alerts, notably for rain.
“Severe storms and bouts of heavy rain to occur from the Nation’s Heartland to the Ohio Valley and Northeast through Tuesday,” the Weather Service warned.
The Northeast already saw heavy rainfall and flash flooding over the weekend.
In Pennsylvania, sudden rains struck parts of Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, killing at least five people and trapping others in their cars. In one part of Long Island in New York, five inches of rain fell in less than two hours.
“We are in a very, very unstable weather condition,” Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, said. “Your car can go from a place of safety to a place of death.”
And if that wasn’t enough, smoke from the ongoing wildfires in Canada will again affect the United States this week and could trigger air quality alerts over parts the Northern High Plains, the Midwest, the Great Lakes and the Northeast.
Camille Baker and Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting.
