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The United States continues to suffer from extreme weather, as a heat wave scorched millions in the upper Midwest and Northeast, and a tropical storm drenched Texas and northern Mexico.
The National Weather Service said the heat wave is expected to peak in the eastern Great Lakes, New England, Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic by next weekend.
“Widespread daily record high temperatures are likely. Heavy to excessive rainfall will be associated with thunderstorms expected to move across parts of the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest,” a weather release said Thursday.
A tropical cyclone The Gulf of Mexico building named Alberto is forecast to bring heavy rain, flooding threats and gusty winds to south Texas, but will “gradually diminish” as it makes landfall in Mexico and dissipates.
An air quality alert has been issued new York A city where the early season heat wave continues to tax residents. Highs are expected to reach 92F (33C) on Thursday, while RealFeels will jump to nearly 100F (38C). Conditions are expected to ease over the weekend.
in New Mexicowhere a wildfire tore through the southern village of Ruidoso on Tuesday, killing two and destroying 1,400 buildings, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham asked the White House to declare two wildfires major disasters.
in Caribou, Maineturned into meteorological an interesting place given its location in the northern US, the high temperature records were tied Wednesday with a record set in 2020, when the thermometer reached 96F.
In Bangor, Maine, Wednesday’s high temperature of 95F tied the record last set in 1995. Bangor’s all-time high temperature record is 104F, set on August 19, 1935.
The high temperatures are due to tortuous fluctuations in the jet stream which may allow heat domesor persistent areas of high pressure over an area.
“When these meanders in the jet stream get bigger, they move more slowly and can become stationary. Then heat domes can occur,” he explains William Gallusprofessor of meteorology at Iowa State University.
Historically, heat domes have been blamed for a record 739 deaths in five days in Chicago in 1995; the 1980 US Southern Plains heat wave that killed 10,000; for record temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona, last summer; and for the Dust Bowl in the US in the 1930s.
Brett Anderson, a climate expert and senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, said in an email that a massive and persistent ridge of high pressure in the atmosphere has covered much of Mexico since early March.
“This effectively prevented most cold fronts from reaching the north of the country in the spring, allowing huge amounts of heat to build up over the last three months.” In June, this heat pocket began to expand northward into the US Southwest,” Anderson wrote.
High pressure, he added, has “severely limited rain and thunderstorm activity, diverting most of the tropical moisture away from the country, leading to unusually dry conditions and severe drought.”
Anderson said that “climate change is clearly playing a role in amplifying this warming. We also go from moderate to strong El Niño. This is usually the time period, the later stages of El Niño, when we see the greatest warming influence from this natural phenomenon.
But El Niño is usually followed by La Niña, which usually has a slightly cooling effect on the average global temperature. However, he wrote: “Global temperatures for 2025 are still likely to rank in the top ten hottest years on record due to global warming.”
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