Extreme Weather Hits U.S. Earlier

The first hurricane of the season landed in the United States, earlier than normal this week. On Monday, Beryl hit southern Texas as a Category 1 hurricane and left at least eight people dead in Texas and Louisiana. At least nine other people perished as it moved through the Caribbean and Mexico last week, CNN reported. The storm continued to move through the U.S. mid-week bringing flooding rains, damaging winds, and tornados to the Midwest today. The storm should reach Canada by the end of the week.

In the aftermath, more than 2.2 million people throughout Texas are without electricity, and Tuesday and Wednesday were forecasted to bring extreme heat to the area. A heat advisory was in place Tuesday for southeast Texas, where temperatures reached the 90s, but heat indices reached 105 F.

On Tuesday, heat alerts were issued for about half the U.S. with the West Coast hit particularly hard, according to the National Integrated Heat Health Information System. Dozens of locations in the West and Pacific Northwest also tied or broke previous heat records during the weekend and are forecast to keep breaking records this week, the Associated Press reported. Death Valley National Park in California, one of the hottest places on Earth, has hit record breaking temperatures at around 130 F this week—driving global visitors and causing one to perish from the heat on Saturday.

Meanwhile the largest wildfire in California this year has burned more than 26,000 acres in Santa Barbara County, The Mercury News reported. The Lake Fire, which started on July 5, is 12% contained, and hundreds of people have been evacuated. So far this year, California has had six wildfires greater than 10,000 acres, which surpasses last year at this time with the biggest fire at 1,560 acres. Last year, the four fires over 10,000 acres didn’t start until August, CalFire reported.

Already this year, approximately 20 major fires have been burning in the West since mid to late June with firefighters working in extreme temperatures to extinguish the blazes.