Record-setting heat wave expands east, over 100 million under alerts
Oppressive humidity levels will make it feel 5 to 15 degrees hotter, producing heat index values from 100 to 115 degrees over a large swath of the central and eastern Lower 48.
Heat advisories or excessive-heat watches and warnings cover the entirety of Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana and parts of more than a dozen other states.
The National Weather Service forecasts that temperatures could challenge records in more than 100 cities through Wednesday, from Denver to Charleston, S.C.
The heat is projected to be most prolonged and intense in the middle of the country.
Relentless heat is forecast in St. Louis, where the mercury is predicted to hit at least 100 each of these days — with heat index values of up to 113. It is under an excessive-heat warning for “dangerously hot conditions,” according to the Weather Service.
The sultry air is simultaneously fueling the risk for severe thunderstorms along the northern periphery of the heat wave. The Weather Service is carefully monitoring the potential for the development of a violent complex of storms that could sweep from the Upper Midwest into the Ohio Valley and the Mid-Atlantic on Monday afternoon into early Tuesday.
Forecasts into next week call for the punishing heat wave to persist over the central states. Heat waves like this are typical staples of summer, but their impacts are made more severe and prolonged by human-caused climate change.
Where the heat is now, where it’s headed and how long it could last
The excessive heat is the result of an intense and sprawling zone of high pressure, sometimes referred to as a heat dome.
The dome, centered over the Southwest on Saturday, has shifted east. On Monday, it was hovering over the lower Mississippi Valley, placing much of the eastern half of the country, aside from the Northeast, in its crosshairs. By Wednesday, it will shuffle toward Nashville before oozing west again.
On Monday, readings above 100 degrees are forecast for most of Texas, with upper 90s from the Corn Belt all the way east to the Carolinas. Record-challenging highs near 100 are forecast in Denver, Dallas, Omaha, Memphis and Charlotte, among many other locations.
Temperatures in the upper 90s to near 100 could make it as far north as Minneapolis on Tuesday, with 98 in Atlanta, 97 in Chicago and 101 degrees in Raleigh, N.C. Columbia, S.C., could hit a whopping 102 degrees.
The combination of heat and humidity in Charlotte on Tuesday and Wednesday — producing heat index values near 110 — may be the most intense there since 2010.
On Wednesday, temperatures in the upper 90s will be ubiquitous from the central Plains and Texas through the eastern Great Lakes, Midwest and…
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