After shattering high temperature records for the month of March in 14 states and the United States in general, the gigantic dome of heat that has scorched the southwest of the country is slowly moving east and could end up becoming one of the most extensive heat waves in the history of the nation, meteorologists and climatological historians indicated.
And it’s not going away for a while; perhaps until the middle of next week, said meteorologist Gregg Gallina of the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.
“It’s basically going to be hot all over the United States,” Gallina declared Monday. “The area of record temperatures is extremely large. That’s what’s really strange.”
This heat dome — in which high pressure acts like the lid of a pot, trapping hot air over a region — will leave Flagstaff, Arizona, with 11 or 12 straight days of temperatures above the city’s previous March record, explained meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections.
Gallina said the eastward shift of the dome will result in temperatures near 35 Celsius (90 Fahrenheit) by Wednesday over the southern and central plains. About a third or quarter of the lower 48 U.S. states will be around their all-time temperature mark for the month of March, Gallina added.
The area over which this heat wave extends will likely far exceed two historic waves of high temperatures — one in 2012 in the north-central region and the northeast of the country, and another in 2021 in the northwest — according to climatological historian Chris Burt, author of the book “Extreme Weather.” It may not be as big as the Dust Bowl heat waves of 1936, but that time it was a series of heat waves over two summer months, not one big episode like it is today, Burt explained.
Both the Dust Bowl and the 2021 heat wave were more intense, with higher temperatures that caused greater damage to the population because they occurred in June and July, Gallina highlighted.
Another factor in favor of the population during the current heat wave is that it is not as humid as it would be if temperatures rose in the summer, Gallina added.
The Weather Service reported that four places in Arizona and California reached 44.4 Celsius (112 Fahrenheit) on Friday. The temperature not only surpassed the record for the hottest day of the month of March in the lower 48 states by 2 degrees Celsius (4 Fahrenheit), but it was just one degree shy of becoming the hottest day for the month of April in the lower 48 states.
Climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks weather records around the world, compiled a list of 14 states that have recorded their hottest day for the month of March since this extreme temperature event began: California, Arizona, Nevada, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, Utah, South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota and Idaho.
“In Mexico, records were even broken for the month of May, with new records for March by up to 7.7 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit), much more than in July 1936, March 1907 or June 2021,” Herrera said in an email.
The National Center for Environmental Information recorded at least 479 record-breaking weather stations for the month of March from Wednesday through Saturday, based on its network of stations. Herrera, who analyzed a broader set of data, said the real number is probably higher. The center indicated that, at the same time, another 1,472 daily records were shattered — which are easier to break.
What’s happening is that the jet stream — which moves weather systems from west to east — is virtually stuck as far west as the storms that have caused flooding in Hawaii, Masters and Gallina said.
A group of international climatologists called World Weather Attribution determined Friday that the record heat was “virtually impossible” and 800 times more likely due to climate change caused by the consumption of coal, oil and natural gas. The result of those activities increased the temperature by at least 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit), said report co-author Clair Barnes of Imperial College London and a member of the group.
Masters noted that the heat dome will move toward the end of next week: “We just have to give it time.”
