NORTHWEST SWELTERING UNDER HEAT WAVE
Portland, Seattle report new daily record high temps
Under the sweltering heat, Matthew Carr spent his lunch break in a fountain in downtown Portland, Ore. The 57-year-old works outside picking up trash for the city and had to find a way to cool off.
“This is pretty hot,” Carr said. “I can just take my uniform off, jump in there with my shorts for my break, and hang out for a good 10 or 15 minutes.”
Temperatures soared to 102 degrees Fahrenheit in Oregon’s largest city on Tuesday, which is expected to be the hottest day of a scorching spell that will be unusually long for this part of the United States. It was also a new daily record for the city for July 26, besting the previous mark set in 2020.
Seattle also reported a new record daily high of 94 degrees, breaking the previous record of 92 degrees from 2018, according to the National Weather Service.
Elsewhere in Washington state, record daily temperatures were also registered in Bellingham and the capital Olympia, which experienced 90 degrees and 97 degrees, respectively.
Oregon health officials said there has been an uptick in the number of people reporting heat-related illness in emergency departments, and the number of those calling emergency services numbers for similar symptoms.
“Heat-related illness daily visits are above expected levels statewide,” said Jonathan Modie, lead communications officer at the Oregon Health Authority’s Public Health Division. He said there were 32 such visits to emergency departments on Monday compared with three to five per day before the heat wave began.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency across much of the state, warning the extreme temperatures may cause utility outages and transportation disruptions.
Portland officials have opened cooling centers in public buildings and installed misting stations in parks. TriMet, which operates public transportation in the Portland metropolitan area, will allow passengers who cannot afford fares to ride for free when heading to cooling centers.
As the northwestern U.S. heated up, the hot spell on the East Coast appeared to have broken, with few areas east of the Mississippi River under heat advisories Tuesday.
Philadelphia hit 99 degrees Sunday before factoring in humidity. Newark, N.J., marked five consecutive days of 100 degrees or higher, the longest such streak since records began in 1931. Boston also hit 100 degrees, surpassing the previous daily record high of 98 degrees set in 1933. On Tuesday, highs peaked in the 80s in New York and Boston.
While temperatures this week are not expected to get as high as last year’s recordsetting 116 degrees in Portland during a heat wave in which about 800 people in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia died, the anticipated number of consecutive hot days has raised concerns among officials.
The National Weather Service has issued an extreme heat warning for large swaths of Oregon and Washington state, including Portland and Seattle, out of concern that nighttime temperatures won’t help residents to sufficiently cool off.
Officials in Seattle and Portland have also issued air quality advisories through Saturday.