Heat Wave Hits Europe, Hot Weather Warnings Issued Nationwide
A woman holds a fan during a heat wave in New York City, on June 22, 2025. AFP via Getty Images
Parts of 18 states across the country are under heat advisories Tuesday, including extreme heat warnings in California, Arizona and Nevada, where temperatures could hit 120 degrees.
A heat advisory along the East Coast has been issued in 11 states, including Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, and a heat index of up to 100 degrees is expected in New York City.
Red flag warnings, which warn of dry, hot and windy weather perfect for wildfire combustion, accompany heat warnings in parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada.
The NWS's Climate Prediction Center has said above-normal temperatures are expected across the entire contiguous United States for July, August and September.
Parts of Europe are experiencing yet another heat wave this week that has forced the temporary closure of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, where temperatures were predicted to hit 107 degrees Tuesday, and led to a health alert issued for some areas of England as the U.K. prepares for temperatures topping 90 degrees.
In South Korea, an early end to monsoon season led to heat wave warnings issued across most of the country this week.
Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We're launching text message alerts so you'll always know the biggest stories shaping the day's headlines. Text 'Alerts' to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here : joinsubtext.com/forbes.
The World Meteorological Association has said global mean near-surface temperatures are expected to remain at, or near, record levels for the next five years. A May report says there is an 80% chance at least one year between 2025 and 2029 will be warmer than 2024, currently the hottest year on record, and that Arctic warming over the next five winters is predicted to be more than three-and-a-half-times the global average.
Parts of Europe were debilitated by a heat wave last week that has been blamed for hundreds of deaths and shuttered popular tourist attractions. A powerful heat dome combined with a marine heat wave in the Mediterranean Sea, causing temperatures up to 9 degrees above average to soar across the continent. Temperatures broke records in Spain (which reached 114.8 degrees) and Portugal, which recorded its hottest temperature ever (115.8 degrees). Portugal's directorate-general for health said the country recorded 284 excess deaths during the heat wave, a majority of which were people older than 85. Italy and France each reported two deaths and hundreds of hospitalizations in the heat wave, and four people died in Spain. In France, the Eiffel Tower summit was closed to tourists for several days and the Beznau Nuclear Power Plant in Switzerland was forced to close one of its reactors due to high river-water temperatures. Wildfires blazed and forced evacuations on the Greek island of Crete, in Portugal and Spain and in five districts in Turkey, where 50,000 residents were temporarily displaced and dozens of people were injured. Key Background
Since the industrial revolution introduced skyrocketing use of fossil fuels and other climate-harming behaviors in the mid-1800s, Earth has been warming at an unprecedented rate. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean and biosphere have occurred since, and NASA says the current warming rate hasn't been seen in the last 10,000 years. In 2023, a sweeping climate report declared Europe the world's fastest-warming continent, with a temperature 2.3 degrees Celsius hotter than it was in pre-industrial times. Globally, 2024 was the hottest year on record. Temperatures in 2024 were 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit above NASA's 20th-century baseline and the breaking of the record came after 15 consecutive months of monthly temperature records (from June 2023 through August 2024). The hottest day ever recorded was on July 22, 2024, when global surface air temperatures reached an average of 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit. Further Reading Forbes First Heat Wave: Here's What To Know As 170 Million People Could Be Affected Across U.S. By Antonio Pequeño IV Forbes Europe Warming Faster Than Any Other Continent, Report Suggests By Mary Whitfill Roeloffs Forbes 3 Policy Approaches To Tackle Extreme Heat By Michael Sheldrick
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Severe thunderstorm watch in effect for NYC
NEW YORK (PIX11) — A Severe Thunderstorm Watch is in effect for New York City until 9 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. The highest chance of severe weather is between 6 and 9 p.m. More Local News Officials warn of the possibility of strong to severe thunderstorms with damaging winds of up to 70 mph. There could be heavy rain in some spots. The storms could cause power outages. New York City is also under a flood watch until 2 a.m. Wednesday. 'Some spots may see even more. Flash flooding is possible, especially in low-lying neighborhoods or areas with poor drainage,' said Zachary Iscol, commissioner of Emergency Management. Pool hours will be extended to 8 p.m. during the heat, but beaches close at 6 p.m. You can text NOTIFYNYC to 692-692 for citywide emergency updates. Ben Mitchell is a digital content producer from Vermont who has covered both local and international news since 2021. He joined PIX11 in 2024. See more of his work here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Rescue teams find three more bodies after central Texas floods
By Rich McKay and Jonathan Allen (Reuters) -The death toll in Kerr County crept up to 87 on Tuesday as search and rescue teams recovered three more bodies in the flood-ravaged hills of central Texas, according to officials in the county worst hit by the disaster. Rescue teams from federal agencies, neighboring states and Mexico have joined local efforts to search for survivors, which have been hindered by thunderstorms and downpours. As they work through lists of people reported missing, the teams have not found a living survivor in Kerr County since Friday. The floods have killed at least 109 people including dozens of children. "The work is extremely treacherous, time-consuming," Lieutenant Colonel Ben Baker of the Texas Game Wardens said at the press conference. "It's dirty work. The water is still there." Torrential rains before dawn on Friday deluged the Guadalupe River, which burst its banks and killed dozens of people, leaving behind mangled piles of debris, trees and cars. Local and federal emergency officials have faced days of angry questions about whether they could have warned people in flood-prone Texas Hill Country sooner. At least 56 adults and 30 children have been killed in Kerr County, Sheriff Larry Leitha said at a press conference in Kerrville, the county seat, with more than two dozen victims yet to be identified. Authorities have not determined if the 87th victim was an adult or child. Some of the flood victims were sleeping at Camp Mystic, a riverside Christian girls' summer camp near the town of Hunt; five children and one camp counsellor were still unaccounted for on Tuesday. The sheriff rebuffed several questions about the county's emergency management operations and preparedness, and declined to say who in the county was ultimately in charge of monitoring weather alerts and issuing a flood warning or evacuation order. He said his office first started getting 911 emergency calls between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. on Friday, several hours after the local National Weather Service station issued a flash-flood alert. "We're in the process of trying to put (together) a timeline," Leitha said. The floods killed at least another 22 people outside Kerr County, according to local sheriffs' and media reports, with seven dead in Travis County, seven dead in Kendall County, five dead in Burnett County, two in Williamson County and one in Tom Green County. U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, plans to visit the devastated region this week, a spokesperson said. Democrats in Washington have called for an official investigation into whether the Trump administration's job cuts at the National Weather Service affected the agency's response to the floods.
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Why the Texas Floods Were So Deadly
The floods that ravaged Texas last week, leaving more than 105 people dead, occurred in a region known as Flash Flood Alley. And while the storm developed quickly, the National Weather Service offered what appears to have been a relatively good forecast in a rapidly developing situation, according to former Weather Service officials. But despite known risks in the area and warnings that were first issued around midnight Thursday, the floods became one of the deadliest weather events in recent American history. How did that happen? It's too early to say with certainty that the slow-moving thunderstorms were made worse by man-made climate change. But the weather pattern that unleashed more than 10 inches of rain in a matter of hours is precisely the kind of phenomenon that scientists say is becoming more common because of global warming. 'The atmosphere is like a giant sponge,' said Arsum Pathak, director of adaptation and coastal resilience at the National Wildlife Federation. 'As the air gets warmer, which is what's been happening because of climate change, the sponge can hold a lot more water. And then when there's a storm, the same sponge can squeeze out way more water than it used to.' President Trump, thus far, has avoided casting blame for the storm's death toll, and called the floods 'a hundred-year catastrophe' in remarks to reporters on Sunday. But Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, said the research showed that as the planet warmed, sudden outbursts of extreme precipitation were becoming more powerful. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
