Heat wave blasts Pacific Northwest states

Seattle has only hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) three times in recorded history. The National Weather Service says the town could top triple digits many times in the coming days and could eclipse the all-time record of 103 F (39 C) on Monday.

The Pacific Northwest sweltered as a historic heat wave hit Washington and Oregon, with temperatures in lots of areas likely to top out up to 30 degrees above normal.

“If you’re keeping a written list of the records which will fall, you might need a few pages by early in a few days,” NWS Seattle tweeted.

The extreme and dangerous heat was expected to break all-time records in cities and towns from eastern Washington state to southern Oregon as concerns mounted about wildfire risk in an area that’s already experiencing a crippling and extended drought.

Seattle was likely to edge above 100 F (C) over the weekend and in Portland, Oregon, weather forecasters said the thermometer could soar to 108 F (42 C) by Sunday, breaking an all-time record of 107 F (42 C) set in 1981. Unusually hot weather was likely to extend into in a few days for much of the region.

The Northwest heat wave sent residents scrambling in an area familiar with mild summers where many persons don’t have air-con. Stores sold-out of portable ac units and fans, some hospitals canceled outdoor vaccination clinics, cities opened cooling centers, baseball teams canceled or moved up weekend games and utilities braced for possible power outages.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee lifted COVID-19 capacity restrictions on publicly owned or operated and nonprofit cooling centers in light of the heat. Capacity is currently limited by 50% until the state fully reopens next Wednesday.

And in Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown suspended capacity limits for movie theaters and stores - places with air-conditioning - in addition to swimming pools ahead of a statewide reopening Wednesday.

According to 2019 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, Seattle gets the lowest rate of air conditioned homes of any major American city. Only 44% of the homes in the metro area have air-con. In the Portland metro area that figure was 79%.

At a hardware store in Seattle, in regards to a dozen people prearranged before opening hoping to snag an air conditioner. A worker opened the entranceway at 8 a.m. with bad news: there have been only three units.

Among the lucky buyers was Sarah O’Sell, who was worried for her cat amid predictions of triple digits.

“Unfortunately, we’re needs to see this season after year,” said O’Sell, who used a dolly to transport her new unit to her local apartment. “We’re likely to end up like California and that’s likely to be desert down there. It’s only going to get hotter.”

The sweltering temperatures expected on the final weekend of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials in Eugene, Oregon, also prompted USA Track and Field to reschedule several weekend events to times earlier in the day in order to avoid the peak heat.

And families prearranged in the beating sun for ice cream and a few valuable hours at community pools still operating under capacity restrictions because of COVID-19.

Sara Stathos was selling ice cream from in a air-conditioned food truck in Portland and said the business enterprise would turn off over the weekend for the reason that ice cream “basically melts as we hand it to customers” in such warm weather.

“We don’t want people standing out in the sun, waiting and getting sick,” she said.

The extended “heat dome” was a taste into the future for the Pacific Northwest as climate change reshapes weather patterns worldwide, said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington who studies global warming and its effects on public health.

“We know from evidence around the world that climate change is increasing the frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves. We’re likely to need to get used to this in the years ahead. Temperatures 're going up and extreme temperatures 're going up even more quickly,” she said.

“I tell my students if they get to be as old as I am, they’re likely to look back and think about how precisely nice the summers used to be.”

The heat can be worrisome for the region because heated air sucks moisture out of your soil and vegetation more efficiently than cooler air and which makes everything more prone to fire, she said.

Oregon in particular was devastated by an unusually intense wildfire season last fall that torched about 1 million acres (404,685 hectares), burned a lot more than 4,000 homes and killed nine people. Several fires already are burning around the Pacific Northwest and much of the region has already been in extreme or exceptional drought, in line with the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Fire crews were being positioned in advance in areas where fire risk was high and counties and cities over the region enacted burn bans - in some instances even temporarily prohibiting personal fireworks for the July 4 holiday weekend.