“A crushing and extremely dangerous heat wave is expected to hit the West this weekend, as well as parts of the South,” the US National Weather Service (NWS) warned in a bulletin released Saturday morning.

“Multiple temperature records are likely to be set, and air quality issues will be common in multiple regions of the United States,” the NWS added.

The feature reported that residents of central and southern California saw the thermometer reach between 41°C and 45°C.

In that state’s famous Death Valley, one of the hottest places on earth, temperatures hit 51C and are expected to hit 54C on Sunday. Even the minimum will be at 38ºC.

Relief isn’t expected to come anytime soon for the more than 90 million Americans under high-temperature watch, as the heat dome is expected to “remain stationary over (these regions) for the next several days,” according to the NWS forecast.

In Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, one of the hardest hit states in the southwestern United States, 47°C was recorded on Saturday afternoon, the 16th consecutive day of highs above 43°C .

Part of the state is under the “magenta” alert level, a “rare and/or long-term extreme heat level” that represents the highest alert level in the NWS.

In southern California (west), firefighters have been fighting several very violent fires since Friday which have devastated more than 1,214 hectares and caused the evacuation of the population.

According to climatologist Daniel Swain of the University of California, Los Angeles, the mercury level in Death Valley could equal or even exceed the highest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth at 54.4. °C recorded in the same place in 2020 and 2021, according to several experts.

“harmful”

Other parts of the United States are also exposed to the weather.

“Strong to severe thunderstorms, torrential rains and flooding are possible in a number of locations, particularly and unfortunately in New England, which is already saturated” by recent rainfall, according to the NWS.

This region of the northeast of the country, and in particular the state of Vermont, suffered this week “historic and catastrophic” floods following torrential rains.

In neighboring Canada, the number of forest fires continues to increase, especially in the west of the country, where several hundred igneous sources have been recorded in a few days, most of them caused by electrical storms.

And the situation is not going to improve, since “hot and dry weather is expected for the next few months”, told AFP Sarah Budd, of the Forest Fire Service of the Canadian province of British Columbia. “We are not expecting any weather break,” he acknowledged.

More than 10 million hectares have already burned across the country this year, 11 times the annual average for the past decade.

The all-time annual record, set in 1989, has been largely surpassed and numbers are expected to continue to rise, according to official projections.

Additionally, smoke from the fires in Canada once again sent plumes of smoke toward the southern neighbor. Several northern US states, such as Montana and North Dakota, have reported “harmful” levels of air quality.

Greenhouse gas emissions increase the strength, duration and frequency of heat waves, experts say.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has noted that “heat waves are occurring more frequently than ever in major U.S. cities.”

“Their frequency has steadily increased, from an average of two heat waves per year in the 1960s to six per year in the 2010s and 2020s,” he noted.