On Friday, July 17, extreme summer weather in the United States is converging from three directions simultaneously: choking smoke in the East, flooding in the South, and rapidly spreading fires in the West.
According to meteorological data and expert analysis, at least 178 million people in America (over half of the total population) are currently facing a survival crisis, dealing with smoky air, deadly high temperatures, or battling catastrophic floods all at once.
Smoke from wildfires in Canada has shrouded large areas of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwest, affecting the air quality for approximately 87 million people on Friday. Among them, around 70 million people are enduring the dual torment of smoke and high temperatures. Meanwhile, in Texas, about 10 million people were under flood alerts on Friday.
According to a briefing from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), 15 states in the United States are currently experiencing 68 large wildfires, an increase of nearly two dozen from the previous day. The Pacific Northwest region saw 17 new fires erupt rapidly after a series of lightning strikes, making it the most active region for wildfires in the country.
Record-low snowpack and drought in the Western mountains have pushed the environment to extremely dry and flammable levels, a situation typically not seen until mid-August.
To combat the wildfires, over 17,400 personnel, 140 helicopters, and 4 military C-130 air tankers have been deployed throughout the United States.
So far this year, nearly 3.72 million acres of land have been burned in the United States, over a million acres more than the record set in mid-July last year.
Meanwhile, smoke from Canadian wildfires has turned the skylines from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C. into orange-brown hues, forcing tens of millions of people to face dangerous air quality and scorching temperatures.
According to data from Swiss air quality technology company IQAir, air quality in Chicago ranked as the second worst globally on Friday. Local officials have urgently closed parks and beaches along Lake Michigan and canceled all outdoor activities.
This closure of outdoor spaces has posed a more severe challenge for heat relief. The National Weather Service (NWS) predicts temperatures in Chicago to surpass 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius), with a heat index soaring up to 97 degrees Fahrenheit, prompting the opening of the city’s community cooling centers.
However, approximately 4% of households in the city do not have air conditioning, and the closure of parks and beaches further limits residents’ options for cooling off.
Earlier this week, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Toronto also ranked among the world’s most polluted cities. Currently, a heat dome lingering over North Carolina is forming Northwest winds, funneling smoke towards the most densely populated corridors in the United States.
In Texas, extreme rainfall has brought catastrophic flash floods for the third consecutive day. According to data from the National Weather Service (NWS), some areas in the state have received over 27 inches of rain since Tuesday.
Casualties and evacuations: Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed that this week’s floods have resulted in two deaths (one 65-year-old man washed away with his RV near Comfort, and a 74-year-old man drowned while driving in Uvalde County). Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for some communities in the Hill Country, with rescuers pulling hundreds of people from the water.
This flood comes just two weeks after the anniversary of last July’s devastating floods along the Guadalupe River, which resulted in at least 135 deaths among the towns now facing flooding once again.
The rugged terrain of the Texas Hill Country, with its limestone formations and poor soil water retention, quickly channels surface runoff into rivers after heavy rainfall, leading to the frequent occurrence of destructive flash floods.
The Weather Service predicts that rainfall in Texas will taper off starting on Friday, with the upcoming week transitioning to hot and dry weather.
Scientists emphasize that the co-occurrence of these extreme weather events is not isolated but interconnected disasters.
Jesse Berman, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, states: “These are compound events, and sometimes their impacts can be much worse than experiencing any of these disasters individually.”
Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, notes: “The impacts we’re seeing this summer are completely consistent with what we’ve long anticipated. It is very likely that we will see more occurrences of ‘multiple extreme events happening simultaneously’ in the future as they are closely linked to specific configurations of jet streams.”
Climate scientists explain that the current large and amplified fluctuations in the Jet Stream at high altitudes are being blocked and stalled in specific regions, forming what is known in meteorology as “resonance.” This persistent configuration of the Jet Stream leads to the fires in the West, the heat dome in North Carolina, and the storm system in Texas all becoming trapped in place, creating a triple chaos of high temperatures, wildfires, and heavy rain occurring simultaneously across the United States.
(This article draws from reports by Reuters and Bloomberg)