Meteorologists warn week ahead in US will have dangerous temps: 'Heat is
not to be played with'
[July 11, 2026]
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Most of America's Lower 48 states are about to swelter under an
unusually large, strong and long-lasting heat dome that will spike
temperatures in a way that the National Weather Service calls
“significant and dangerous.”
The heat wave will start this weekend and last at least a week, with
some areas feeling its effects until the end of the month,
meteorologists said. Temperatures will be 15 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (8
to 14 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal in many areas, including at
night, they said. Hotter nighttime temperatures are especially bad for
both human health and efforts to tamp down an already active wildfire
season.
“This upcoming heat wave does look pretty remarkable,” said Daniel
Swain, a climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and
Natural Resources. “This is going to be a long duration, widespread and
high-intensity heat event that’s going to affect millions of people for
over a week.”
Trapping hot air, threatening records
A dome of high pressure — which traps hot air like a pot lid while
blocking cooling winds and rain — will initially park over the Northern
Plains, but it will be so big that it will trap sweltering temperatures
across as much as two-thirds of the continental United States, three
meteorologists told The Associated Press. While it will initially miss
the East Coast, the heat dome will shift and wobble, maybe even
spreading from coast-to-coast over the next 10 days or more, they said.
Forecasters are expecting record triple-digit highs this weekend in
Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota and South
Dakota.
The weather service is predicting more than 90 U.S. local temperature
records will be tied or broken through Wednesday, with two-thirds being
overnight heat records that can hinder how the human body recovers from
broiling days.
“Nights can be just as dangerous as days. If you don’t get heat relief
at night, that’s going to spill out into your daytime experience and
become extremely dangerous,” said meteorologist Bob Henson with Yale
Climate Connections. “Heat is not to be played with. It’s just as
dangerous as a tornado or hurricane that can kill you just as easily,
just in a quiet and different way.”
Heat wave will be bigger, longer-lasting and stronger than most
Swain said what makes this heat wave so different is how big a warm
shadow it will cast and how long it will persist.
In the past couple of weeks, major heat waves have caused extensive
suffering in Europe, the U.S. East Coast and most recently the U.S.
Southeast. Now any place in the United States that escaped the earlier
July heat waves will get this one, Swain said.
Rain is likely to sneak below the southern edge of the heat dome and
douse the U.S. Southeast during the daytime, setting up something
strange, Climate Central meteorologist Shel Winkley said. Because of the
added moisture and humidity, the Southeast could get record-shattering
nighttime heat but below-normal daytime warmth, he said.
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Vendors sell Gatorade and water bottles near the Washington Monument
during a heat wave, July 3, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia
Demaree Nikhinson, File)
The weather service is predicting record nighttime heat in a number
of locations from Texas to Florida to North Carolina on Saturday.
Temperatures won't drop below 80 degrees (27 degrees Celsius) at
night in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Miami; Tampa, Florida; Galveston,
Texas; and Charleston, South Carolina, according to the forecast.
While heat domes are not unusual in the summer, Winkley said this
one stands out because of how strong it is, likely to set records
for the amount of high pressure that it will contain. It's
especially unusual for being so far north, he said.
It’s likely to persist so long because drought-stricken areas have
less soil and air moisture that would normally slow the warming of
the air, Swain said. The drier, hotter air then worsens the drought
conditions and stokes more heat in a vicious cycle, he said.
This will add to wildfire risk, already bad because of the drought,
he said.
Climate change is worsening the heat
The El Nino that recently formed is too young to have a pronounced
impact on this heat wave, but climate change from the burning of
coal, oil and natural gas clearly does, the three meteorologists
said.
“We know that heat waves are becoming more intense, they’re lasting
longer, they’re covering larger areas than they used to because of
human-caused climate change,” Swain said. “And so when we see an
event like this, we know there is at least a partial contribution by
the long-term warming trend.”
Climate Central uses 20 different computer models to compare what's
forecast to what would be expected in a world without greenhouse
gas-caused warming as part of its Climate Shift Index. A
20,000-square-mile (52,000-square-kilometer) swath of the country
from Southern California to northern Minnesota where 24 million
people live this weekend will have warmth reaching the highest level
on that index, meaning the heat is at least five times more likely
because of climate change. Their analysis produced similar readings
for the East Coast heat wave over the July 4 weekend and the recent
Southeast heat wave.
“Using attribution science we know that those temperatures would be
virtually impossible without the influence of climate change,”
Winkley said.
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