30 million people under heat alerts as western US swelters
Los Angeles: Hot weather alerts are in place for more than 30 million people across the western United States after the region's second heat wave in weeks brought another round of record-equalling high temperatures.
Sweltering conditions have hit much of the Pacific seaboard and as far inland as the western edge of the Rocky Mountains over the weekend, with forecasters warning of more to come on Sunday.
Las Vegas matched its all-time record of 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.2 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service (NWS) -- a temperature recorded in the desert entertainment city once in 1942 and three other times since 2005.
Forecasters issued an excessive heat warning for the city along with several other urban centers including the southern city of Phoenix and San Jose, the center of the Silicon Valley tech industry south of San Francisco.
"Over 30 million people remain under either excessive heat warnings or heat advisories," the NWS said on Saturday, adding that dangerous heat and dry conditions would continue through Sunday.
The weekend's hot weather follows another heat wave that struck the western United States and Canada at the end of June.
The scorching conditions saw the all-time record daily temperature broken three days in a row in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
The death toll is not yet known but is thought to run into the hundreds.
Last month was the hottest June on record in North America, according to data released by the European Union's climate monitoring service.
Human activity has driven global temperatures up, stoking increasingly fierce storms, extreme heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.
The World Meteorological Organization and Britain's Met Office said in May there was a 40 percent chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily surpassing 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures within the next five years.
The past six years, including 2020, have been the six warmest on record.
Meanwhile, firefighters struggled to contain an exploding Northern California wildfire under blazing temperatures.
On Friday, Death Valley National Park in California recorded a staggering high of 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54 Celsius) and could reach the same high on Saturday. If verified, the 130-degree reading would be the hottest high recorded there since July 1913, when the same Furnace Creek desert area hit 134 F (57 C), considered the highest reliably measured temperature on Earth.
The Beckwourth Complex two lightning-caused fires burning 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Lake Tahoe showed no sign of slowing its rush northeast from the Sierra Nevada forest region after doubling in size between Friday and Saturday.
California's northern mountain areas already have seen several large fires that have destroyed more than a dozen homes. Although there are no confirmed reports of building damage, the fire prompted evacuation orders or warnings for roughly 2,800 people along with the closure of nearly 200 square miles (518 square kilometers) of Plumas National Forest.
On Friday, hot rising air formed a gigantic, smoky pyrocumulus cloud that reached thousands of feet high and created its own lightning, fire information officer Lisa Cox said.
Spot fires caused by embers leapt up to a mile (1.6 kilometers) ahead of the northeastern flank too far for firefighters to safely battle and winds funneled the fire up draws and canyons full of dry fuel, where it can actually pick up speed, Cox said.
The flames rose up to 100 feet (31 meters) in places, forcing firefighters to focus instead on building dozer lines to protect homes.
