A heat wave that has taxed the Texas power grid and threatened to bring extreme temperatures to the state is expected to spread north and east next week, National Weather Service forecasters said Monday.
“Going forward, that heat will expand … north to Kansas City and the entire state of Oklahoma, into the Mississippi Valley … into the far western Florida Panhandle and some parts of western Alabama,” he said. Forecaster Bob Oravec said.
Oravec said record high temperatures of around 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) were forecast for parts of West Texas on Monday, and relief was not expected before the Fourth of July holiday.
The heat prompted the creation of the Texas Electric Reliability Council, the operator of the Texas power grid. Ask the residents last week To voluntarily reduce the electricity due to the expected record demand on the system.
The National Integrated Heat Health Information System reports that more than 46 million people are under a heat warning from western Texas and southeastern New Mexico to the western Florida Panhandle. NIHHIS is a joint project of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A heat wave, or heat dome, is the result of a stationary high-pressure dome over the Gulf of Mexico combined with warmer air and heat from the sun, Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said. he said.
“As we get into the middle of summer, it’s hard to get warm air up,” said Nielsen-Gammon, a professor in the Texas A&M College of Atmospheric Sciences. “If this is going to happen, this is the time of year.”
Nielsen-Gammon said July and August don’t have as much sunshine because the sun is receding from the summer it was Wednesday.
“What’s a little unusual about this heat wave is that we’ve had a very wet April and May, and usually that extra moisture acts as an air conditioner,” Nielsen-Gammon said. But the high altitude was so hot that it couldn’t prevent a heat wave and actually added to the humidity quite a bit.
The heat will come After Sunday’s storms It killed three people in Arkansas and Tennessee, left more than 100,000 customers without power, and left tens of thousands without power in Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana. power outage.us.