Markets, schools and vaccination centers closed, staggered Olympic selection events and residents taking refuge in "refreshment" centers ... Western Canada and the United States are experiencing new "historic" temperature records caused by an extremely rare climatic phenomenon , called "heat dome", namely high pressures that trap hot air.
The intensity of this "heat dome" is "so statistically rare that one might only expect it once every few thousand years on average," say weather specialists at the Washington Post.
“But human-induced climate change has made these kinds of exceptional events more likely.
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Never seen since 1940
It was 46.1 ° C at Portland airport Monday afternoon (after a record 44.4 degrees the day before) and 41.6 degrees at Seattle, according to readings by the US Weather Service ( NWS).
But the situation is most extreme in western Canada. In Lytton, a village northeast of Vancouver, the record set the day before was broken again: the mercury climbed Monday to 47.9 degrees. The highest temperature ever recorded in Canada before this heat wave was 45 degrees, it was in 1937.