Hot asphalt, ‘corn sweat’ and floods: midwest swelters as heatwave grips the US | US weather

In a splashing cushion on the banks of the Grande Rivière Miami in downtown Dayton, Michelle Winston, her partner and their daughter came to cool off the brutal heat.

“This is our first time here this year, but because it is so hot, we will come back for sure,” she said, helping her daughter to clear the water from her eyes.

Winston, his family and about 25 other Daytonians at the Splash Pad are among the millions of midwesterners looking for a relief of a serious heat dome that swallowed up the United States this week.

In Kentucky, Metro de Louisville’s emergency services launched Operation White Flag on Monday, which allows people to access two of its shelters when the heat index crosses 95F (35C) – Nine degrees above normal for this period of the year.

On Sunday, the cities of Ohio broke their daily temperatures daily for this date.

Inevitably, arrow temperatures have attracted people such as Winston to water, which presents its own risks. A series of drownings in lakes, careers and rivers has been reported in recent days. The Chicago fire service responded to 90 calls related to heat and water emergencies over the weekend. Authorities argue with people to take care of the waterways.

Heat kills more people in the United States than hurricanes, tornadoes and combined floods.

The constant expansion suburbs of concrete buildings and asphalt roads, which serve as heat tanks, have aggravated the situation, which serve as heat tanks. This results in higher night temperatures, which, in turn, feeds greater demand from artificial cooling systems. Throughout the region, these systems are often powered by electricity generated by fossil global warming fuels such as natural gas.

Although extreme weather conditions have always been a characteristic of life in the Midwest, experts say that global warming temperatures contribute to more serious and less stable weather conditions.

A 2023 study revealed that the Midwest would probably suffer more than most other regions of the world by being a “damp thermal stress hotspot” if global temperatures increased above a 3C threshold from the current levels. Studies show that heat -related deaths have increased considerably in recent years, in accordance with the increase in global temperatures.

Rural communities have also not managed to escape heat.

While trees and natural vegetation can play an important role in soaking the radiant heat of the sun, “corn sweat”, in which extremely popular culture releases the humidity of its leaves in the atmosphere, contributes real to humidity in rural areas.

“I grew up with that; This is part of agriculture, ”explains Bill Wiley, who cultivates wheat, corn, soybeans and specialized vegetables on 500 acres in the county of Shelby of Ohio. This week, he did most of his agricultural work in the evening to avoid heat.

What Wiley, however, is more concerned with the largest climate image.

“Climate change should not be, but is a political controversy among farmers. On the other hand, when you speak to farmers anecdotally, they say that time is much less predictable than before,” he said.

Wiley says that Rainstorms in March led to serious localized floods and road closings that neither he or others had witnessed in the past. “The drought we had last year was more extreme than what we had in 20 years. Things happen that push the limits of what many would consider normal, ”he says.

Although a large part of the state is covered with lush forest, Virginia-Western is in record temperatures and an extreme heat warning this week, which has not been experienced since the 1930s.

For Thomas Rodd, a climate activist based in Moatsville, Virginia-Western, the green topography of the state hides a more sinister reality.

“Right now, through Virginia-Western, western Pennsylvania and Ohio, there are literally thousands of old gas wells that fuvert methane gas, which is a major greenhouse gas. We must increase the financing of projects so that they do not continue to release methane in the atmosphere, “he says.

“There is really almost a 100% agreement among scientists that we face at record temperatures in the future. It’s really a terrifying perspective. Unfortunately, Virginia-Western has contributed to this. People have burned a lot of coal and gas here. ”

In addition to the heat, Rodd says that there are other extremes linked to the climate crisis that take place in West Virginia.

“Climate change does not only lead to high temperatures; This leads to more extreme floods. It changes everything. “

At least eight people died in sudden floods in the Virginia-Western Panhandle this month, while up to four inches of rain fell in just 30 minutes. The floods caused power failures for thousands and gas leaks.

“We have to leave the ancient trees where they are. We have a large number of these trees in Western Virginia and unfortunately, the Trump administration wants to remove them, “he said. On Monday, the American secretary for agriculture, Brooke Rollins, announced that 59 million national forest acres in the United States would be open to logging. Virginia-Western is home to two national forests with more than a million acres. More than 78% of the state is wooded, the third highest percentage in the United States after Maine and New Hampshire.

In the extreme time like this, farmers and agricultural workers are strongly dependent on the forecast of precise weather conditions, and the elump elimination of the national ocean and atmospheric administration could make more difficult for farmers, breeders and their staff to do in complete safety and effectively work that puts food on the tables of hundreds of millions of Americans.

“Farmers do a lot according to their decisions to find out if it will rain or be dry,” explains Wiley. “”[The cuts] could have an increasingly important impact. »»