SACRAMENTO, California — Much of California was scorching hot on Tuesday, and the weather was expected to only get worse through the week of the Fourth of July in parts of the United States, where nearly 90 million people are under heat alert.
According to the National Weather Service, the extreme weather conditions were caused by a high pressure area near the West Coast and a separate area that issued heat warnings and advisories from Kansas and Missouri to the Gulf Coast states.
California’s capital, Sacramento, was under an extreme heat warning expected to last until Sunday evening, with temperatures expected to range between 40.5 and 46 degrees Celsius.
John Mendoza, 35, called it a “fire hose of heat” as he walked through the Capitol Tuesday morning with an iced coffee in his hand. By 9 a.m., he had already been in a pool once — and he planned to go back later in the day.
“I felt like I had to stay underwater,” he said.
As temperatures rose before noon in Sacramento, Katherine Powers sought refuge in the shade of Cathedral Square. Powers, who is homeless, sipped sparkling water as she rested her bare feet on the shaded sidewalk.
Powers said she lent her shoes to a friend. She had not yet visited any of Sacramento County’s nine “cooling centers,” she said, because of the difficulty of carrying all of her belongings.
“I just go to a park with a water fountain to stay cool, stay in the shade and just keep pouring water on myself, basically,” she said. “There’s not much I can do.”
Darlene Crumedy, who lives in Fairfield, about an hour’s drive from Sacramento, says she doesn’t use air conditioning because it’s too expensive.
“I’m doing fine, I have a hundred fans,” she said, adding that she tries to stay indoors and drink cold water.
Kim Mims, a Sacramento native, says she prefers the heat, but only up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Everything on top of that, you start to feel the difference,” she said.
An analysis by The Associated Press found that heat killed more than 2,300 people in the US last year, setting a record. That figure is likely a gross underestimate, dozens of experts told AP reporters.
Dr. Arthur Jey, an emergency physician at Sutter Health in Sacramento, told reporters that staying out of the heat is important. Wearing a hat and loose clothing, staying hydrated and watching for signs of heatstroke are also important.
“Heatstroke is like a stroke,” said Jey, who described symptoms as unusual behavior, severe headache, blurred vision, heavy sweating and then not sweating.
“And that’s a really big problem,” Jey said. “So we want to prevent them from even getting close to heat stroke.”
The heat in California was expected to spread from north to south through the week, with the worst concentrated inland, including the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys and the southern deserts. But warnings extended just below the coast.
According to meteorologists, in San Francisco, known for its cool summers, the maximum temperature on Tuesday will be over 31 degrees Celsius in the city center, but even around 18.3 degrees Celsius in Ocean Beach.
“The high pressure dome will linger over California for at least a week, and more long-range forecasts suggest the timeline may even be optimistic,” the Bay Area Weather Service wrote.
The heat came with gusts and dry winds in the northern part of the state, where utility Pacific Gas & Electrically implemented public safety power outage in parts of 10 provinces to prevent wildfires from fallen or damaged power lines.
About 12,000 customers were told their power might be shut off and were given information about centers where they could get ice, water, snacks, Wi-Fi and other supplies, PG&said E.
California has a series of wildfires in the spring and early summer feeding on abundant grasses brought by successive wet winters. The largest current blaze, dubbed the Basin Fire, was 17% contained Tuesday after charring more than 21 square miles (54 square kilometers) of the Sierra National Forest in eastern Fresno County.
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Antczak reported from Los Angeles.