Heat and smoke are smothering most of the U.S., putting lives at risk

Much of the United States felt like a blazing inferno Wednesday, as record heat attacked the South like a blowtorch, thick smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed the Great Lakes region, and triple-digit temperatures threatened to wallop California for the first time this year.

Scientists said climate change helped shape the weather conditions that were causing misery and putting lives at risk from Mexico to Canada. There was no disputing the impact: If it wasn’t way too smoky, it was way too hot.

“Everybody’s saying, ‘We’re used to the heat, but not to this degree,’ ” said Mayor Victor Treviño of Laredo, Texas, which recorded temperatures of 115 degrees last week, tying its all-time high. There were nine heat-related deaths, Webb County Medical Examiner Corinne Stern told county commissioners Monday, adding, “I think our county was caught a little off-guard.”

If Laredo and elsewhere in the South were caught off-guard by the heat, much of the rest of the country was getting an unexpected dose of horrendous air quality because of dense wildfire smoke rolling in from Canada. Air quality alerts related to the smoke were in effect for parts of some 17 states, covering nearly a third of the U.S. population.

Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis were among the cities with the worst air quality in the world, according to IQAir. Unhealthy Code Red and Purple conditions stretched from eastern Iowa across Chicago and the lower Great Lakes region and toward the Appalachian Mountains, according to AirNow.gov.

“Poor air quality due to smoke from Canadian wildfires will continue through” Thursday, the National Weather Service in Chicago wrote on Twitter. “Everyone should avoid prolonged outdoor activities and those w/chronic respiratory issues should stay indoors if possible.”

An exceptionally rare Code Maroon was recorded in Decatur, Illinois, during the midday. This is the worst level on the scale and considered hazardous. Chippewa, Ohio, was also reporting Code Maroon conditions.

Cities seeing Code Purple air quality Wednesday – very unhealthy, with an increased health risk for the general public – included Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and Cedar Rapids in Iowa.

Forecasts for the smoke were changing, sometimes rapidly. After lingering in Code Orange territory on Wednesday, D.C., Maryland and Virginia were looking at more-dangerous Code Red conditions for Thursday, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments said on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.

Between the wildfire smoke and the heat, “You get to pick your poison,” said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.

“They’re different things, but the common factor is climate change,” Dessler said. “Heat waves occur naturally, as do fires, but climate change makes the heat waves more intense and the fires more intense.”

Such phenomena are likely only to worsen in years to come, but a gridlocked Congress has no plans to take action on climate beyond the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year. That leaves further efforts up to states, where approaches vary wildly. Some liberal states, particularly California, have moved aggressively to pass climate legislation, while conservative states such as Texas have taken little or no action.

“We are seeing a climate that didn’t exist before,” said Alice Hill, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on Wednesday at a Washington Post Live event on extreme weather. “We simply don’t have what we need for a climate-worsened environment, and we are sorely behind in the land use choices, the building codes, the type of changes that would keep us much safer in a hotter, more dangerous world.”

Relief from the wildfire smoke and the Southern heat wave was on the horizon, but not for another several days.

The National Weather Service in Houston warned that heat indexes above 108 threatened into the weekend.

“If you’ve been thinking to yourself, ‘Self, it’s felt like a raging inferno for awhile’ … Well, here’s some reassurance that it has indeed been feeling spicy for what seems like an eternity. Heat Indices have been in the triple digits for most of June,” the agency said Tuesday night on Twitter

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