Faced with the still significant heat wave in the Hellenic Peninsula, Greece has decided to maintain the absolute vigilance plan this Saturday, July 22. Expected temperatures are expected to approach 44°C this weekend. At the same time, a record heat wave is also expected to hit the southern United States before picking up across the country.
In Greece, all archaeological sites, including the famous Acropolis of Athens, will keep their doors closed during the hottest hours until Sunday, the Ministry of Culture announced.
“We need absolute vigilance […] because the difficult times are not over,” warned Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. “We are facing a new heat wave” and “a possible strengthening of the winds” which have already been fanning several violent fires around the capital since Monday, he added.
Temperatures of up to 45°C are expected in the center of the country on Saturday. According to the National Observatory of Athens, the absolute record in the capital was recorded in June 2007, with 44.8°C. Nationally, it was established in July 1977 with 48°C in Elefsina, near Athens. “I’m used to high temperatures. Every summer we have it, but what is difficult this year is that the heat waves follow one another,” acknowledged Christos Boyiatzis, who shines the shoes of businessmen in the upscale Kolonaki district.
“What worries us is that the forecast points to a further increase in temperatures next week. It would then be a heat wave stretching over more than fifteen days, the longest ever recorded in Greece,” Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development of the National Observatory of Athens, told AFP.
Across the Atlantic, about 80 million Americans will experience temperatures of 41 ° C and more this weekend, alert the American weather services (NWS).
They could rise to more than 46 ° C in Phoenix, Arizona (Southwest), which is currently experiencing its longest heat wave on record: Friday, the mercury exceeded 43 ° C for the 22nd day in a row.
On Thursday, a fire broke out at a propane storage site, with explosions of gas tanks.
“On a hot day like this, these propane tanks expand with the heat, they become real missiles” sending debris up to more than 450 meters, a local fire official told local television KPHO.
500 kilometers away in California, Death Valley and its hottest temperatures on the planet attract tourists, who want to take pictures alongside a screen displaying increasingly extreme temperatures.
Some are waiting for the all-time record on Earth – recorded at 56.6°C in Death Valley in 1913, but disputed by some experts – to be broken.
A 71-year-old man died there earlier this week, and Death Valley National Park rangers suspect “heat played a part” in his death, which would make it the second of the year.
For the rest of July, the heat wave should move towards the center of the country, on the side of the Rockies and the great plains of the Midwest, according to the American Agency for Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation (NOAA).
And July is on track to break the record for the hottest month on record, not just in the time measurements were taken, but in “hundreds, if not thousands of years,” NASA chief climatologist Gavin Schmidt told reporters. And it’s not just due to El Niño, the cyclical weather phenomenon that originates in the Pacific Ocean and causes global temperatures to rise, he said. For the specialist, the extreme temperatures will persist, because “we continue to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”.
