An early summer heat wave brought exceptional warmth to the Southwest in June 2024.
An early summer heat wave brought exceptional warmth to the Southwest in June 2024. On June 6 and 7, high temperatures broke calendar-day records in several communities in Nevada, Arizona, and California.
The event began with a heat dome that baked Mexico for most of May and shattered heat records there. By early June, the start of meteorological summer, the sweltering temperatures had expanded northward into the U.S. at the same time as a low-pressure blocking system set up in the Pacific Ocean.
The map above shows air temperatures across the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico on June 6, 2024. The map was produced by combining observations from satellites and other sources with temperatures predicted by a version of the GEOS (Goddard Earth Observing System) model, which uses mathematical equations to represent physical processes in the atmosphere. The darkest reds indicate temperatures of more than 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius) at about 6.5 feet (2 meters) above the ground.
Read more at: NASA Earth Observatory
Photo Credit: Michala Garrison
