The heat wave in Texas shows no signs of stopping
A weather pattern that has brought unrelenting heat to Texas for more than a week is unlikely to end until at least early July, according to forecast models, with record-breaking heat expected to spread to nearby states this weekend.
“It feels like sticking your head in an oven,” says Tom Decker, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in San Angelo, Texas, who describes what it was like when he stepped outside this week. The temperature measured at his weather station matched its record of 111 degrees on Monday and shattered it again on Tuesday and Wednesday with values of 114 per day.
When it’s that bad, Mr. Decker said, he spends most of his time in an air-conditioned office or home. But he’s worried about people who don’t have that luxury, like the oil-drilling crews, and the ranchers and ranchers in his predicted region.
The heat will become more dangerous and potentially deadly in the coming days, especially for people exposed to it repeatedly and for long periods of time, forecasters from the Weather Prediction Center warned.
“Not only are daytime temperatures and dew points abnormally high, yielding some record heat index readings, but overnight lows are also close to or at record levels,” said Alex Lamers, a forecaster with the Weather Prediction Center.
Texas officials asked residents to conserve electricity amid concerns that several days of triple-digit temperatures could strain the power grid. As of Friday, more than 100,000 homes and businesses were without power in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. according to poweroutage.usa website that keeps track of utilities.
According to New York Times estimates, more than 33 million people in the United States would experience dangerous heat indexes on Friday — a measure of how the air feels when both air temperature and humidity are taken into account. The affected population is expected to grow this weekend as the dome of high pressure shifts to places like New Orleans, which is often humid in the summer.
Prolonged periods of high temperatures during the day with low lighting at night, as in this heat wave, create a cumulative physiological burden on the human body, according to the World Health Organizationexacerbating the leading causes of death worldwide.
San Antonio may have seen some of the worst conditions. Through Wednesday, the city had 21 hours with a heat index over 110 degrees this past week. Since 1946, the city had previously recorded only 18 such hours in the same period, Mr. Lamers said.
As the heat continues through the weekend, it will spread to Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, where temperatures will also likely top 100 degrees by the middle of next week.
Mr. Lamers and other forecasters said they were confident that this weather pattern would continue through July 4.