Record Temperatures Predicted in 4 States During Severe Heat Wave

While Vermont flooded after intense rains and Chicago is among the areas of the Midwest to see devastating tornadoes, four states in the southwest U.S. are gearing up for potentially record-breaking heat waves in the next few days.

The National Weather Service (NWS) is predicting that "record-tying/breaking temperatures are possible" as an "oppressive" hot front begins to build in California and the Pacific Northwest on Friday, with "abnormally warm" lows that will bring little relief overnight.

"Unfortunately, the long term outlook through the weekend and into next week is for an increasingly significant and oppressive heatwave," the NWS said in a forecast on Thursday morning.

Highs in parts of California, Arizona, Nevada and Texas are expected to top out well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and some local records could be broken if the predictions come true in the coming days.

Climate experts have warned that there will be more extreme weather events—including harsh storms, sweltering heat waves and excessive flooding—as climate change impacts weather patterns, making natural atmospheric fluctuations more volatile.

Forecast modeling by Weather.us shows that there will be 121-degree heat around Selma, near Fresno in California, by 6 p.m. on Sunday and 118 near Henderson, by 4 p.m. on Monday. The record for Fresno is currently 115 degrees, which it reached in July 1905.

It also predicts the area near the border between California and Arizona will reach 119 degrees by 8 p.m. ET on Saturday, and temperatures will remain above 100 degrees in Southern California and Phoenix, Arizona, through midnight that night.

The NWS station in Coachella, California, said that there was an 8 percent chance on Saturday and 24 percent chance on Sunday of local temperatures exceeding 123 degrees near Palm Springs, with the desert region seeing "the highest chances of record-breaking heat."

The last time Palm Springs reached that temperature was in 2021, matching previous records.

Weather.us charts suggest the border area will see 120 degrees by 5 p.m. on Sunday, and again by 7 p.m. on Monday. It also expects highs of 114 and 115 degrees, respectively, on Sunday and Monday in Phoenix, the former matching the city's 2020 record.

Arizona has already faced a bout of excessive heat this summer, which created the perfect conditions for wildfires. In late June, a wildfire near Phoenix spread across nearly 2,000 acres and led to the evacuation of over 1,000 residents.

"The heat is going to be expanding across California, Nevada, Arizona and all the way into West Texas into this weekend and the core of the strongest heat seems to be setting up for Friday through Monday," Tom Frieders, a meteorologist at the NWS station in Phoenix, told Reuters on Wednesday. "So we'll be looking at records."

Much of the south and east of Texas will see temperatures of over 100 degrees by 2 p.m. on Sunday, reaching 110 in Austin by 5 p.m.

The city's current record is 112 degrees, which it last saw in 2011. Similarly, Fort Worth is expected to see 110 degrees by 5 p.m. on Monday. The region reached 113 degrees in June 1980.

Texas has already experienced persistent heat, which experts have said is putting pressure on the state's energy grid.

Las Vegas, Nevada, meanwhile, is expected to match its July 2021 record of 117 degrees by 7 p.m. on Sunday, while the NWS predicts temperatures in California's Death Valley will peak at 131 degrees this Thursday—not seen in the arid desert since 1913.

Parts of New Mexico will see heat above 100 degrees throughout Saturday and Sunday, but peak temperatures will not reach where expected to in the surrounding states.

However, Eliot Jacobson, a retired mathematics professor and climate blogger, cautioned on Twitter that weather professionals had told him that the model "has a warm bias in these sorts of situations" and the record 123 degrees near Palm Springs was "very unlikely."

An NWS spokesperson told Newsweek that it was "too early to say whether a record will be broken" on Sunday, but noted there were 33 locations—all across southwest and western states—that are forecast to tie, break or be near the record maximum temperature for that calendar day.

While potentially broken records are a clear sign of the effects of climate change, the prolonged period of heat many parts of the southwest will see is expected to pose problems not only for local populations but the environment as well.

NWS meteorologists have issued excessive heat warnings for swathes of the southwest, urging the public to stay cool. In Arizona alone, between 2010 and 2020, there were 3,091 heat-related deaths.

Heat waves in the summer of 2022 caused widespread wildfires across Europe and California, which in turn exacerbated drought conditions.

Update 07/13/23, 8:33 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from an NWS spokesperson.