Heat Scorching America's Southern Half as July 4th Holiday Nears
Excessive heat warnings were in place for Arizona's largest metro area, where Phoenix and surrounding communities were flirting with highs of 46 degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, Las Vegas in the southwestern state of Nevada, got its first taste of triple digits on Friday, and forecasters warned that warmer temperatures would be in store all weekend, ranging between 41 C and 49 C for much of the region. Clark County officials opened cooling centers for residents Saturday.
Some cities in the southern reaches of New Mexico also were seeing triple digits. While cloud cover from isolated storms might help cool things off in the afternoon, forecasters warned that the storms would bring lightning and erratic gusts but not much rain, leading to elevated fire danger.
Josh Weiss, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said a ridge of high pressure that is expanding across the West and Southwest brings with it very warm to hot temperatures starting in California and expanding through the holiday and eventually into the Pacific Northwest by the middle of next week.
"We're looking at temperatures that will be exceeding 100 degrees [37.6 C], maybe as high as 110 [43 C] in parts of California and in the desert Southwest through the weekend and maybe even exceeding 100 degrees as it gets toward Portland, Oregon, and into the 90s into Seattle by late next week," Weiss said.
By midafternoon Saturday, the National Weather Service had issued heat advisories or excessive heat warnings in Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida.
The Weather Service says extreme heat and humidity significantly increases the potential for heat-related illnesses like heat stroke.
In the Southern state of Louisiana, New Orleans EMS Chief Bill Salmeron said city residents and those in town for the Essence Festival of Culture should drink twice the amount of water they usually consume and avoid the sun when possible by wearing a hat and loose fitting or light-colored clothing. Several cooling centers also are open for those who might need to seek relief from the heat.
The National Weather Service in Memphis in Tennessee said large swaths of the mid-South could experience similar heat over the holiday. The heat index — which is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with temperature — was expected to soar to 41 C to 46 C.
Meanwhile, in the upper Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions, Weiss said some areas were under significant wind and hail advisories.
Widespread thunderstorms and hail touched down in the St. Louis region of Missouri on Friday, leaving damage across several communities, a local TV station reported. More than 100,000 residents in Missouri and Illinois had utility service knocked out as a result.
In north Mississippi, a similar storm pushed through Panola County early Saturday.
"It moved out of the area pretty quickly though, but more could form, bringing with it the potential for hail and damaging winds, later Saturday," said National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Chiuppi.