Utah temperatures are expected to climb this weekend, on track to hit the highest temperatures of the season so far.
Starting out the weekend at 88 degrees on Friday, temperatures will climb until Salt Lake City’s first 100-degree day of the year, which is expected to hit on Monday, per KSL.com — just in time for the Fourth of July.
This summer has already been a doozy for much of the United States as a heatwave pummels the South. Temperatures are expected to climb to triple digits entering the weekend of the Fourth of July. Already, millions are expected to be under a heat advisory.
Americans can expect “excessive Heat Warnings and Advisories across much of California into the Desert Southwest as well as through the lower and mid-Mississippi Valley,” the National Weather Service wrote in a recent forecast.
Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas can expect to see temperatures reach up to 110 degrees by Saturday, the forecast predicts.
Many cities in Texas are experiencing unprecedented temperature records for June, including Laredo, The Washington Post reported. Temperatures have reached 115 degrees in Laredo, causing nine heat-related deaths so far this week, per the Post.
“Everybody’s saying, ‘We’re used to the heat, but not to this degree,’” Mayor Victor Treviño of Laredo, Texas, told the Post.
Florida temperatures have also been unusually high this season as Miami’s chief heat officer, Jane Gilbert, called it “chronic high heat,” reported The New York Times.
The “heat” that Gilbert and others refer to includes not just the temperature, but what is called the heat index.
Calculated using temperature, humidity and other factors, the heat index can be a better measure of the potential danger than just the temperature alone, reported The New York Times.
“Heat is dangerous, whether it be heat with high humidities or the dry heat that they get out in the desert Southwest,” Kimberly McMahon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the Times. “People need to always pay attention, and take it seriously because it is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the United States.”