Dangerous California Heat To Break Record; Worsen Fires

 Yesterday I talked about snow.  Today, I'll get into the intense heat in California.  

While the Front Range of the Rockies brace for that snow, an intense heat wave is building on the West Coast.  

Huge areas of the Southwest
are under excessive heat
warnings (in magenta)

Excessive heat warnings are flying across almost all of California except the higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Some cities could see all time record highs broken. 

Some forecasted high temperatures in California over the coming days are ridiculous. Maybe 110 in Los Angeles and Sacramento.  Perhaps 120 degrees in Palm Springs. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom as declared a state of emergency over the heat risks and associated chances of power black outs 

This is a pretty dangerous situation in the nation's most populous state for lots of reasons.  Excessive heat, especially of this magnitude, is always risky for people who have underlying health issues or people who do too much outdoors. 

This is especially true this time, because smoke and haze from ongoing wildfires just makes the hot air even harder to breathe

People will perhaps tend to crowd more at beaches, or worse, inside air conditioned buildings.  Too many people being too close to one another could make the corona virus pandemic worse.

Electric demand for air conditioning in the heat could cause rolling those power black outs I mentioned which actually would shut off the air conditioning and make the heat worse indoors. 

The biggest threat, of course, is fire. The heat and drought conditions could spread existing fires, and new ones could grow explosively.

In southern California, the hot dome of air and the cold, snowy air mass in the Rockies could team up to create an especially worrisome situation going into next week. 

The two air masses will create a zone of strong east winds coming off the deserts.  The air from the southern Rockies would start off cold, but would warm up and dry out dramatically as it heads down the slopes of the mountains well east of Los Angeles and San Diego. 

The result is a potential worse case scenario of extreme heat, incredibly low humidity, and super strong winds ripping through the canyons and scrubland and passes toward the sprawling Los Angeles basin. 

The worry is fires would break out, and the weather conditions would make the flames unstoppable as they sweep into populated areas. This scenario is not guaranteed, but it is a real risk that emergency managers are very worried about.

This is not a good weekend to be in California, that's for sure.  I for one, am counting my blessings over an anticipated very pleasant and comfortable Labor Day weekend here in Vermont.