JiveSync

PHOENIX — In a city used to blazing summers, a historic heat wave set a new benchmark Tuesday: Temperatures reached 110 degrees on a 19th-consecutive day here.

And then they kept climbing: The mercury hit 116 less than two hours later, breaking a record for Tuesday’s date, and rose as high as 118, according to preliminary National Weather Service data. The hot streak is not expected to end soon, meaning old records will be shattered. High temperatures are forecast to reach 115 degrees or hotter for at least the next week.

“With the rapid population growth of Phoenix and how many people have been moving here, it is very likely that these are the highest temperatures that many Phoenicians have ever experienced,” said David Hondula, director of the city’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation.

It comes during what has already been a summer of extreme heat for the southern tier of the United States, from California to Texas to Florida. Some 58 million people in the United States were expected to experience triple-digit temperatures this week, along with many millions of others enduring heat waves in southern Europe, the Middle East and China.

Advertisement

In Phoenix, residents such as Tonyea Warren say that while they are used to heat, the current stretch of weather is a test. Warren’s primary source of income is driving for Uber, but one scorching day this week, she could handle only two hours in the car.

“I’m prepared,” said Warren, 29, who has lived in Phoenix her entire life. “But it’s different. I ain’t ever felt this heat. This is a different type of heat.”

The list of streaks and records that mark the heat wave is already long, demonstrating her point:

• Temperatures have tied or broken daily records during five of the past six days at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, including a high of 118 degrees Saturday. (The city’s hottest temperature ever observed was 122 degrees on June 26, 1990.)
• Nights are providing little relief from the heat — Tuesday morning was a record ninth in a row at Sky Harbor during which temperatures failed to drop below 90 degrees. Monday morning, temperatures bottomed out at 95 degrees, the highest daily minimum temperature for the date and second-warmest recorded on any day.
• Phoenix is enduring one of its longest stretches ever observed without measurable precipitation, and that lack of rain and clouds is helping the heat persist. Only traces of rain have been observed at Sky Harbor over the past 118 days, one of the 10 longest such streaks there, according to the National Weather Service.
• It’s not just its duration — the heat wave’s intensity is surpassing previous hot streaks. Temperatures have averaged above 101 degrees in Phoenix over the past 17 days. That is significantly hotter than another record-setting heat wave, when the city surpassed 110 degrees on 18 consecutive days in 1974. During that stretch, temperatures averaged 96.5 degrees.

The heat is the product of an unusually strong and persistent area of high pressure that has remained over the southwest for weeks, allowing the region to bake under sunny skies. Other heat domes are fueling extreme temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean, southern Europe and northern Africa, and southern Asia.

Across the southwest, heat has been nearing or breaking all-time records this summer. El Paso has endured 33 consecutive days at or above 100 — 10 days longer than its old record streak. Reno, Nev., hit 108 degrees Sunday, tying that city’s all-time record. Las Vegas reached 116 Sunday, one degree shy of its record high.

100-degree days for weeks? See where streaks have broken records.

Global warming has brought a steady increase in average temperatures, and it also makes extreme heat more severe and more common. The rapid development of the global climate pattern El Niño, known to increase planetary temperatures, has provided even more fuel — even pushing the planet to what have probably been its hottest days in more than 100,000 years.

In Phoenix, the only thing that could break the heat is the region’s annual monsoon season, which began in June and runs through September.

But the monsoon has been noticeably absent for most of the past few weeks, said Sean Benedict, lead meteorologist at the Weather Service’s Phoenix office.

The Phoenix area’s “first taste” of it came Monday, as scattered thunderstorms and dust storms developed across Arizona. But it wasn’t enough to cool things down, Benedict said: “All we really got in Phoenix was dust.”

That meant, by Tuesday, residents were weary. Mika Davis, who lives in the city’s Edison-Eastlake neighborhood, said the prolonged heat had already forced her to move her daughter’s second-birthday party indoors. But after going outside Tuesday morning to walk her dog Lady, Davis said she was starting to reconsider that plan.

“I might even cancel her birthday because it’s just too hot to be doing anything,” said Davis, 38.

Warren, the lifelong Phoenician, brought her family to exercise in a neighborhood park at 7 a.m., when temperatures were only in the 90s — and still came equipped with insulated water bottles and a purple spray bottle to mist her face and keep cool.

Before long, it was time to go back indoors. As Warren and her family prepared to leave, she grabbed her phone to check the weather and paused, an alert on the screen catching her attention.

“Dang, my phone is about to overheat,” she said.

Matthew Cappucci in Washington contributed to this report.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMSmrdOhnKtnYmV%2FdHuPcGZqcF%2BltbCxzaKvZqCVlsFuw8CvnGaqlZi8s7CMrZymqJWnrrXB0Z5krKyimq6sew%3D%3D