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Vancouver: Welcome cooling off in extreme heat
Photo: JENNIFER GAUTHIER / REUTERS
An extreme heat wave has hit western Canada and the northwestern United States.
In the town of Lytton in the Canadian province of British Columbia, the record temperature of 46.1 degrees Celsius was measured on Sunday.
This is the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada, the country's Ministry of the Environment announced.
Over 40 degrees were measured across British Columbia over the weekend.
The previously highest recorded temperature in Canada was 45 degrees Celsius and was recorded in July 1937 in two cities in the province of Saskatchewan.
The Department of the Environment issued warnings for British Columbia and the Province of Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan, Yukon and the Northwest Territories because of the extreme heat.
The heat will last all week, it said.
The temperatures would be ten to 15 degrees above normal.
"Dangerous heat wave"
The US National Weather Service issued a similar warning of a "dangerous heat wave" for the northwestern states of Washington and Oregon.
Record values were expected there for Monday in the cities of Seattle and Portland.
The weather service of the city of Spokane in Washington state reported record temperatures on Sunday.
Temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit correspond to values of around 38 degrees Celsius.
The heat wave is particularly dangerous because it affects the USA over such a large area and lasts so long.
In many places it shouldn't get cooler than 20 degrees Celsius even at night.
For the elderly and the sick, this is an enormous burden on their health.
The heat also increases the risk of forest fires.
Heat thunderstorms in particular, in which no significant amounts of rain fall, could spark new fires.
There is already a fire in several states.
The heat wave is due to a current high pressure area spreading over the western United States.
Scientists have no doubt, however: it is man-made climate change that is making extreme weather events more frequent.
This attitude is also supported by the findings of a new study by Texas A&M University and other research institutions: According to this, the fact that storms and thunderstorms on the Great Plains have increased in frequency and intensity in recent years is clearly related to climate changes.
The results were published in the journal "Nature Geoscience".
wit / AFP / AP