Spiking temperatures have prompted an extreme heat warning for parts of the Pacific Northwest, and forecasters warned that some places could reach 100 degrees or more on Sunday and Monday.
Heat advisories were pre-emptively issued along the coast between Oregon and the Canadian border for Sunday morning through late Tuesday night, with temperatures in some places expected to climb 20 or more degrees above normal.
The National Weather Service office in Seattle said the high temperature there was expected to be near 90, but areas around Olympia and Puget Sound could push closer to 100.
The hottest temperatures are expected in Portland, Ore., where the Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning and forecasters said the high on Sunday and Monday would most likely be between 95 and 99 degrees. Typical high temperatures in Portland for this time of year are in the lower 70s.
Little relief was expected at night, with lows forecast to reach only into the upper 60s.
Local officials across the region urged people to watch the forecast closely and avoid outdoor activities before conditions begin to cool down late Tuesday.
Summers in the Pacific Northwest have historically been cool enough that many homes lack air-conditioning.
In 2021, a heat wave across Washington, Oregon and Idaho shattered records and left hundreds of people dead, many of them in older homes, homeless encampments or other places where little relief was to be found. A review of mortality data by The New York Times found that about 600 more people died in Oregon and Washington during that heat wave than would have been typical for the time period.
A study that year found that heat waves in the Pacific Northwest are likely to become more frequent and the temperatures they bring more extreme as the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels increases and the planet warms.
Weather Service records show that in the last 20 years, Portland International Airport has recorded 100 degrees or higher only 40 times — with two-thirds of those days coming in the last 10 years alone.
The post Pacific Northwest Is Facing Days of Dangerous Heat appeared first on New York Times.
