The western U.S. is awaiting relief in the next couple of days from a heat wave that has set records throughout the region.
“We’ve had at least 200 daily record temperatures set over the last eight or nine days, and that’s just an estimate,” said Craig Schmidt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City. “We’re going to start moderating pretty much starting today.”
Many western states other than Colorado have reported temperatures above 100 degrees in the past 10 to 12 days. Las Vegas tied its all-time record of 117 degrees on July 19. Reno, Nev., and other locations in the state set a record nine consecutive days with temperatures of 100 or more.
The highest temperature in the heat wave was 129 at Death Valley, Calif., Schmidt said. It wasn’t a record for Death Valley, where the highest-ever reading is 134.
Power companies reported record demand. From July 12 to July 18, Sierra Pacific Resources, which supplies power to parts of Nevada and California, set four records, peaking in demand of 1,744 megawatts on July 18, spokeswoman Faye Andersen said. The average of the July peaks for the past 10 years is 1,448 megawatts, said Sierra Pacific spokesman Karl Walquist.
The heat hasn’t brought a rash of wildfires, although the National Interagency Fire Center has issued a red-flag warning for northern and central Nevada for lightning.
The West may have to put up with higher temperatures for several more months, with scorching heat predicted for the desert southwest, government forecasters said in a report today.
Higher-than-average temperatures will stretch from the Pacific coast of Washington to El Paso in West Texas, encasing the Rocky Mountain region, with the worst heat in a pocket of the Southwest that includes western Arizona, parts of eastern California and southern Nevada, from August through October, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said.
