A heat wave that brought dangerously high temperatures near 110 degrees to some inland parts of Washington, Oregon and Idaho this weekend is forecast to recede for some areas early this week — but not in Boise, Idaho, where Sunday’s high of 108 degrees broke the daily record.
Parts of the three states, along with northern Nevada, encountered blistering heat once again on Sunday, the continuation of a hot July for the whole region, where extreme heat was linked to hundreds of deaths in 2021.
In Boise, Sunday’s high of 108 degrees also made it the 14th straight day with highs of 99 degrees or above in southern Idaho, said Les Colin, a senior forecaster at the National Weather Service office in Boise. On most of those days, the temperature was above 100.
One marker of how long the area has been broiling: The Boise Farmers Market closed early for the second Saturday in a row, to keep vendors safe in the heat.
Temperatures there will not drop significantly until the end of the week, according to forecasters. If forecasts hold, Thursday will be the 10th straight 100-degree day, a record for the number of consecutive days with triple-digit temperatures in the city.
In Spokane, Wash., the high reached 106 degrees on Sunday, and triple-digit temperatures are forecast to continue Monday. After that, a dry cold front is expected to bring cooler temperatures.
Temperatures were more normal in the region’s most populated areas, closer to the coasts. In Portland, Ore., Sunday’s high of 81 was actually a bit below the typical highs for late July, the National Weather Service said. In Seattle, the high of 81 was close to average, and cooler than recent days.
In western Washington, forecasters expect highs to fall into the mid-70s on Monday.,
For meteorologists and residents of the region, the extreme heat of late has recalled the devastating heat wave of 2021, when overall temperature records were broken by several degrees in many cities, and hundreds of people died.Unlike parts of the country where summer has long meant sweltering conditions, the Pacific Northwest is in many ways not built for heat. Seattle residents have famously long eschewed air conditioning, and homes are often designed to keep the sun and the heat in, not out.
During a heat wave in 2021, a lack of air conditioning was a factor when two men on the same floor of the same apartment building died on the same hot night in Spokane. Overall, heat was a factor in the deaths of 20 Spokane residents that summer.
On Sunday morning, William Richard was taking the garbage out at the New Washington apartments, the complex where those two men had died on the same night in 2021. He said he was lucky enough to have acquired a window unit, a gift from a friend’s mother, when he moved into one of the tiny units in April. Even then, he said, it only managed to lower the temperature to about the same as it was outside.
Early Sunday afternoon, the temperature outside was 101 degrees. The rooms without air- conditioners, he said, felt anywhere from five to 15 degrees hotter without a window unit.
For Spokane, this heat wave has lasted longer than the heat event in 2021, but the high temperatures have been lower and, significantly, nights have been cooler, said Brian G. Henning, the director of the Gonzaga Institute for Climate, Water and the Environment.
“Bodies are able to recover,” he said. “I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re having fewer visits to the emergency department.”
Scientists said that climate change appears to be increasing the intensity and duration of heat events in the Northwest.
“We’re used to heat, we’d get some extreme heat, that would be normal,” Dr. Henning said of Spokane. “It’s just that now, the severity is worse, and the duration is longer.”
Paul Loikith, an associate professor of geography at Portland State University, said it was safe to assume that climate change had added about three degrees to the summer temperatures in the Pacific Northwest, on days of “extreme heat” and normal days alike. That means cool days are not as cool, and warm days are warmer.
The current heat wave has also aggravated fires in the region, said Mr. Colin, the senior forecaster in Boise. That city’s Sunday forecast included “areas of smoke,” mostly produced by two wildfires in eastern and central Oregon.
“When there’s an existing fire, which is created by lightning or even by people, those fires tend to become very active, and spread rapidly,” Mr. Colin said.
But the smoke, which partly filters the sun, would reduce high temperatures by a couple of degrees on Sunday and Monday, the Weather Service predicted.
As Boise residents faced another workweek of triple-digit temperatures, they sought refuge Sunday on the Boise River, renting rafts from an outfitter. At Ann Morrison Park downtown, families in swimsuits and life vests dragged rafts out of the river and up a gravelly hill toward employees of the outfitter, who threw them onto a truck.
One of the workers, Ryan Finke, 19, surveyed the scene from under a canopy that was providing shade. He grew up north of Seattle, he said, in an area that today was 30 degrees cooler than Boise was on Sunday. He said he was still not used to the heat there, and that sometimes he could not find much to do on his days off because of it.
On a brighter side, the heat has made it a busy summer for floating on the Boise River, a popular activity over a six-mile stretch that draws around 125,000 people each year.
“Every time it’s above 100° on a weekend, there’s going to be people who want to float,” he said. “Because at that temperature, there’s not a lot else people want to do.”
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