The scorching weather continues to bring high humidity in big cities, making it dangerous to be outside for an extended period.
Recent heat forecast across the Northeast shows that some showers and thunderstorms will cool things off a bit from the Northeast to the Southeast – but not for long, as temperatures will heat up again over the weekend.
Meanwhile, rain and storms will bring a bit of relief for portions of the Southwest and the southern Rockies, but also the risk of isolated flash flooding.
Due to the sweeping heat, thousands of homeless people are struggling to stay alive as the summer’s triple-digit temperatures arrive.
In Phoenix, Arizona, temperatures rose to 114 degrees earlier last month — making it one of the hottest summers ever recorded.
”During the summer, it’s pretty hard to find a place at night that’s cool enough to sleep without the police running you off,” Chris Medlock, a homeless Phoenix man known as ”T-Bone,” told the Associated Press.
Medlock carries everything he owns in a small backpack and often sleeps in a park or a nearby desert preserve to avoid large crowds.
”If a kind soul could just offer a place on their couch indoors, maybe more people would live,” he said at a dining room where homeless people can find shade and get a free meal.
This comes after 339 people died from heat-related causes in Phoenix last year, including 130 homeless people. Local officials and advocates have recently opened a 200-bed shelter for homeless people to prevent deaths this summer.
According to the AP, more weather-related deaths are caused by excessive heat in the U.S. than flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes combined, and heat waves have become more frequent and more extreme as climate change drives rising temperatures nearly everywhere.
”As temperatures continue to rise across the U.S. and the world, cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, or Kansas City that don’t have the experience or infrastructure for dealing with heat have to adjust as well,” Climate scientist David Hondula told the news outlet.
Advocates said that heat contributes to about 1,500 deaths every year across the country and about half of heat-related deaths are homeless people.
