Historic heat wave blasts Northwest as wildfire risks soar

Gillian Flaccus and Manuel Valdes/AP

Updated: Jun 25, 2021 / 04:39 PM CDT

Sarah O’Sell transports her new air conditioning unit to her nearby apartment on a dolly in Seattle on Friday, June 25, 2021. O’Sell snagged one of the few AC units available at the Junction True Value Hardware as Pacific Northwest residents brace for an unprecedented heat wave that has temperatures forecasted in triple-digits. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Pacific Northwest sweltered Friday and braced for even hotter weather through the weekend as a historic heat wave hit Washington and Oregon, with temperatures in many areas expected to top out up to 30 degrees above normal.

The extreme and potentially dangerous heat was expected to break all-time records in cities and towns from eastern Washington state to Portland to southern Oregon as concerns mounted about wildfire risk in a region that’s already experiencing a crippling and extended drought.

Seattle was expected to edge above 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend and in Portland, Oregon, weather forecasters said the thermometer could soar to 108 F by Sunday, breaking an all-time record of 107 F set in 1981. Unusually hot weather was expected to extend into next week for much of the region.

Seattle has only hit 100 F three times in recorded history, the National Weather Service said, and there was a chance it could eclipse the record of 103 F on Monday.

“If you’re keeping a written list of the records that will fall, you might need a few pages by early next week,” NWS Seattle tweeted, as it announced that the city had already tied a record Friday for the highest morning-low temperature.

The extremely hot weather comes a week after a heat wave in the intermountain West broke records from Montana to Arizona.

The Northwest heat wave sent residents scrambling in a region accustomed to mild summers where many people don’t have air conditioning. Stores sold out of portable air conditioners and fans, some hospitals canceled outdoor vaccination clinics, cities opened cooling centers, baseball teams canceled or moved up weekend games and utilities braced for possible power outages.

According to 2019 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, Seattle has the lowest rate of air conditioned homes of any major American city. Only 44% of the homes in the metro area have air conditioning. In the Portland metro area, that figure was 79%.

At a hardware store in Seattle, about a dozen people lined up before opening hoping to snag an air conditioning unit. A worker opened the door at 8 a.m. with bad news: there were only three units.

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One of the lucky buyers was Sarah O’Sell, who was worried for her cat amid predictions of triple digits.

“Unfortunately, we’re starting to see this year after year,” said O’Sell, who used a dolly to transport her new unit to her nearby apartment. “We’re going to be like California, and that’s going to be desert down there. It’s only going to get hotter.”

The sweltering temperatures expected on the final weekend of the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials in Eugene, Oregon, also prompted USA Track and Field to reschedule several weekend events to times earlier in the day to avoid the peak heat. The Portland Pickles, the city’s semi-professional baseball team, offered weekend tickets for $1.11 — the possible high on Sunday — to keep people in the stands.

The extended “heat dome” was a taste of the future for the Pacific Northwest as climate change reshapes weather patterns worldwide, said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington who studies global warming and its effects on public health.

“We know from evidence around the world that climate change is increasing the frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves. We’re going to have to get used to this going forward. Temperatures are going up and extreme temperatures are going up even faster,” she said.

“I tell my students when they get to be as old as I am, they’re going to look back and think about how nice the summers used to be.”

The heat is also worrisome for the region because warm air sucks the moisture out of the soil and vegetation more efficiently than cooler air and that makes everything more prone to fire, she said.

Oregon in particular was devastated by an unusually intense wildfire season last fall that torched about 1 million acres, burned more than 4,000 homes and killed nine people. Several fires are already burning around the Pacific Northwest and much of the region is already extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Fire crews were being positioned ahead of time in areas where fire risk was high and counties and cities across the region enacted burn bans — in some cases even temporarily prohibiting personal fireworks for the July 4 holiday weekend.

Valdes reported from Seattle.