“Is it hot enough for you yet?”
It’s a common greeting on the edge of the Great Plains now. Welcome to our new reality beneath clear blue summer skies:
The heat dome.
A heat dome currently over the Midwest is expected to drift eastward to raise temperatures and endanger even more Americans this Fourth of July weekend.
Heat domes occur when warm air builds up and high atmospheric pressure pushes that air downward. This phenomenon compresses the heat into a smaller volume to raise temperatures. The high pressure then acts as a cap to hold that heat longer over larger swathes of territory.
Additionally, the amount of daytime heat exceeds what’s lost after sunset because the minimal cloud cover allows unhindered solar radiation to raise temperatures, making nighttime more uncomfortable.
Most record highs are set beneath such heat domes. The ongoing climate crisis is expected to make them more frequent and even hotter. Such slow-moving heat also contributes to extreme drought and wildfire, and threatens lives, particularly among the more vulnerable.
The hot air simply can’t escape. Nor can we.
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