PHOENIX — Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Texas, Colorado, and Kansas were hit by extreme heat on Sunday. Bad weather also hit many other parts of the U.S. The Pacific Northwest was unusually cold for the time of year, the northern Rocky Mountains were expected to get snow, and the northern Plains and upper Midwest were expected to get a lot of rain.
On Sunday, more than 63 million people, from the Southwest to Denver and up to Chicago, were warned about the heat, according to the National Weather Service.
On Saturday, it got as hot as 112 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix. On Sunday, it was also supposed to get pretty hot. From what the weather service knows, the first two weeks of June in Phoenix have been an average of 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual. This is the hottest start to June ever.
“We have already seen some pretty high temperatures in our area,” said Ted Whittock, a Phoenix meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “Everyone should spend less time outside from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., drink plenty of water, and wear light, loose clothing,” they said.
Whittock said that the heat in metro Phoenix will ease up a bit from Monday to Wednesday. However, the high temperatures will rise again as the week goes on, which will probably lead to another excessive heat warning.
Recently, the heat has been especially dangerous in metro Phoenix. In 2023, a record 645 people died because of the heat.
This year, the city and Maricopa County have added more safety measures. For example, there are now two new overnight cooling centers where people can rest in the cool air after the sun goes down. It’s been open since May 1 at more than 100 other places where people can get cold water and sit in a cool area during the day.
Over the weekend, a heat advisory was in effect for the plains in Chavez County, which includes Roswell. On Monday, the high temperature was expected to reach 107 degrees F. Albuquerque was supposed to reach a high of 99 degrees on Sunday. On Monday, it would drop a little to 96 degrees. It was going to get close to 105 degrees in El Paso, Texas, so the city has opened five cooling centers.
Metro Denver and areas to the south were going to have temperatures in the 90s to almost 100 degrees. In places north of Denver, thunderstorms were likely.
On Sunday, the heat wave moved east into the Plains and the area around the Great Lakes. By Tuesday, it was expected to reach the Northeast. In the Chicago area, the chance of thunderstorms with high winds and heavy rain was growing, even though it was expected to be close to 100 degrees by the middle of the week.
Temperatures in Washington, the rest of the mid-Atlantic, and New England were expected to reach highs in the mid- to upper 90s this week as the heat wave moves eastward. The high humidity made it feel even worse.
Since 1936, the United States had the most heat waves last year. A heat wave is when it is unusually hot for more than two days.
The northern Rockies were supposed to get snow on Monday and Tuesday, even though most of the country is already very hot. There was a winter weather watch for parts of Montana and north-central Idaho. The mountains around Missoula, Montana, could get up to 6 inches of heavy, wet snow. Higher ground around Glacier National Park was expected to get as much as 20 inches of rain.
Also, a new batch of tropical moisture will make it more likely that heavy rain and flash flooding will happen along the central Gulf Coast late Sunday night and early Monday morning. It’s going to rain hard starting Monday morning, and by Tuesday, the rain will be moving toward the Gulf Coast.
In southern Florida, the severe flooding caused by heavy rains kept going away. In the past few days, storms dumped up to 20 inches of rain on areas around Miami and Fort Lauderdale, flooding them.
That unnamed storm system hit at the same time as the early start of hurricane season, which is expected to be one of the busiest in recent memory.
