Western heat wave has already smashed all-time record highs and heat streaks, even by standards of the Desert Southwest and California.
This scorching heat kicked off around the July Fourth holiday weekend, and will only slowly relent through the upcoming weekend.
Extreme heat, intensified by climate change, has blanketed much of the United States this summer, killing more than a dozen people in Oregon in recent days. Large parts of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah have been under excessive heat warnings, which local officials believe contributed to more than 90 deaths in the West this month.
The consequences are increasingly playing out in the nation’s emergency rooms, where medical workers are confronted with heat-stricken patients whose soaring body temperatures can be fatal if not addressed quickly.
Around 2,300 people died from heat-related illnesses in the United States in 2023, triple the annual average between 2004 and 2018. Nearly 120,000 heat-related emergency room visits were recorded across the United States last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In part, those figures are because heat waves last longer now than they did decades ago, as an Environmental Protection Agency report released last week made clear.
On Thursday, more than 60 million Americans were under heat alerts from the National Weather Service. Temperatures have at times this summer run between 10 and 30 degrees above average in Western states. Some places like Las Vegas, which hit 120 degrees on Sunday, have broken records.
The heat has been particularly problematic in New Mexico. In July 2023, the state had nearly 450 heat-related emergency room visits and more than 900 between April and September. That is more than double the number recorded during the same time in 2019, said Dr. Srikanth Paladugu, an epidemiologist at the New Mexico Department of Health.
Heat-related emergency admissions at University of New Mexico Hospital also doubled in 2023 compared with the previous year, and the state has recorded over 500 heat-related emergency department visits since April 1 of this year. Those are likely undercounts because of the ways that health problems are recorded in hospital software.
“It’s difficult for us to know how many people are impacted by extreme heat when we look at emergency room data,” said Kelly Turner, a heat expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Many hospitals don’t have a code for heat or extreme heat. If, for instance, what actually happened is someone came in with headaches and pulmonary issues, that’s what’s going to be coded.”
With broiling hot weather baking much of the country, airline passengers are finding yet another reason to dread flying: airplane cabins that feel like saunas.
When planes are waiting at the gate or sitting on an airport runway, temperatures inside can soar, and the air-conditioning may barely function.
In 2018, the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing those workers, petitioned the U.S. Department of Transportation to set minimum standards for cabin temperatures.
But the department said this week that it was still studying the issue, and the complaints from passengers and crew members have not stopped. Some of them warn of the dangers of heatstroke and other heat-related illnesses, not to mention the anxiety and the discomfort of feeling trapped in an overheated airplane cabin.
“I can tell you as an active flight attendant, this is a major problem,” said Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “Everyone has a story about being too hot on an aircraft and the horrible things that happen as a result.”
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The problem, according to Ross Sagun, an aviation consultant who was an airline pilot for 41 years, is that the external air-conditioning units and auxiliary-powered cooling systems don’t always function properly because of maintenance problems or neglect.
“That situation where things aren’t working well is very common, unfortunately,” he said.
Mr. Sagun also blamed “cost control” for causing planes to overheat. Airlines often encourage pilots to save money on fuel and maintenance by keeping the auxiliary power unit and other engines off while the plane is at the gate or on the runway, he said.
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Keeping planes cool means emitting more heat trapping gases. The noose tightens.