The National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat alert for desert areas, as well as a high fire risk alert for forest areas.
A record heat wave hitting the western half of the United States shifted towards the center of the country on Saturday, bringing unusually high temperatures for the season to regions where it was freezing just a week ago. Dozens of cities, from California to Colorado, recorded their highest temperatures ever observed in March, according to the National Weather Service.
Among the regions that set new records for maximum temperatures in March on Saturday were Kansas City, Missouri (central), and North Platte, Nebraska (central), where the temperature reached 33.3°C.
This unusual heat wave has caused temperatures to soar in just a few days. For example, in Chanute, a small town in Kansas, temperatures went from a record low of -10.5°C on March 16 to a record high of 32.8°C just four days later.
On Friday, the heat wave pushed temperatures up to 44.4°C in several regions along the southern border between California and Arizona (southwest), a national record for March.
On Saturday, the National Weather Service issued an extreme heat alert for the same desert areas, as well as a high forest fire risk alert for a large part of the central plains states, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
This record heat wave, affecting millions of Americans with temperatures exceeding seasonal averages by up to 17°C, would have been “almost impossible at this time of year in a world without climate change,” according to a report by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a group of international scientists studying the links between extreme weather events and climate change.
