A heatwave broke early-summer records in the western United States, but the region’s first heatwave of the year eased somewhat on Friday.
Millions of people in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas are under extreme heat warnings this week.
The region is used to sweltering heat, but climate change exacerbated by human activity is causing more extreme weather events and making the current heatwave the earliest in history.
Las Vegas recorded 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 degrees Celsius) on Thursday, the earliest such temperature reached this year.
“It’s been hot the past few days,” the city’s National Weather Service said, announcing a long list of places where daily records had been broken.
Among them, the notoriously hot Death Valley desert reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
A heat wave warning remains in effect in Las Vegas until Saturday, with libraries being converted into air-conditioning centers and some events being moved indoors to help residents escape the heat.
Nearly a dozen people were taken to hospital with heatstroke at a Trump rally in Arizona, fire officials told local ABC affiliate.
Popular hiking trails on Camelback Mountain and Piestewa Peak in the state capital, Phoenix, were closed due to the heat.
“With temperatures approaching 110 degrees, it is not a good day for hiking,” the Phoenix Fire Department posted on Facebook.
Coastal areas were largely spared.
However, in a potentially ominous sign for the coming summer, several small wildfires broke out across California.
The largest fire, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, burned more than 3,600 acres (more than 1,450 hectares) of Central Valley farmland before firefighters had it mostly contained.
Nearly two decades of drought and an increasingly drier climate have led to an alarming number of destructive fires in California in recent years.
Wildfires are a natural and necessary part of the region’s life cycle.
But climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is making glaciers bigger, hotter and more unpredictable.
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