And finally, the boil has come home to roost — tweet below my NWS forecast for right-about now for where I live, California’s Central Valley, as the massive heat wave which just hours ago was located mostly in the US SW has shifted:

Temperatures reach dangerous levels for the next few days across central California., before finally trending down early next week. Excessive Heat Warnings in effect each day through Saturday. Limit outdoors activities, reduce time in the sun, and drink plenty of water. #CAWx pic.twitter.com/iBct4CpUeU

— NWS Hanford (@NWSHanford) June 17, 2021

We’re expecting triple-digit temperatures today and for a few days to come, supposedly cooling-off into the 90s by Tuesday. Apparently, a natural-order of weather as this particular jacked-up-heat surge began in Nevada and Utah last week, then in a westerly-inching circle. flared its way westerward utill it reached my neck of the woods. We were spared some forecasted high temps yesterday and Tuesday by overcast skies and some cool breezes — none of that shit today.
Problem is we’re in a high — The Weather Channel last week: ‘A large dome of high pressure in the upper atmosphere has developed over the West. Beneath the dome, sinking air is causing temperatures to soar well over 100 degrees in many areas.‘
In hindsight, that’s pretty self-explanatory.

And action has a re-action. In this case, heat and use of electrical power — from the LA Times this moring:

Despite assurances that the power grid remains stable, California’s energy operator has issued a statewide Flex Alert for electricity conservation beginning Thursday evening as temperatures around the region continue to break records.
…
In response, the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the electrical grid for most of the state, is asking residents to voluntarily conserve energy in hopes of reducing strain on the system.

The flex alert — a first in 2021 — will be in effect from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday, during which time residents are asked to cut back on their energy use. According to Cal ISO, evening is the most difficult time of day for grid operations because demand for electricity remains high while solar energy generation diminishes.

The statewide call is critical because “when temperatures hit triple digits across a wide geographic area, no state has enough energy available to meet all the heightened demand,” the agency said in a statement, “primarily due to air-conditioning use.”

A measure done in such fashion as to ease worry if there’s more to the electricity/heat thingie:

The alert was issued hours after Cal ISO said that the power grid is stable and that there is no anticipation of imposing rotating power outages.

“We project enough reserves to cover demand for tomorrow evening,” the agency said Wednesday, “but ask Californians to remain vigilant.”

And the future holds the key. However, the immediate future should carry the moniker,’Get used to it, it’s just gonna get worse,’ as our weather will reflect how our climate is doing, which is creeping-quickly into a hotter zone.
Climate change’s big attribute is to make everything worse, sometimes directly, most times indirectly, so we’re going to see bigger storms, and affliated shit like tornadoes, hurricanes and such to increase in size. Maybe not so much in quantity (as in more of them, though, maybe that could be the case), but in quality, an increase in voraciousness.
The word used most often in describing the inluence of climate change is ‘exacerbate.’

Now, I write the above based upon my observation of climatre-change research the last 14 years. I was blindsided in 2007 by the horror of gobal warning, which despite plenty of sources for those who wanted to seek it out, up until that time, for years and years I wasn’t even aware of the enormous-magnitude of the problem. The big kicker for me was the release of the UN’s Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February 2007 (draft report released to the public that follwing summer), which for the first time noted that not only ‘“warming of the climate system is unequivocal,”‘ but that ‘“unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt.”‘
And mankind is to blame: ‘“Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (from human activities) greenhouse gas concentrations,” it says.‘

Starting from there, for me, the rest is climate science reality across the next decade and near-half, from studies, reports of studies, research of many, many studies, and the most-obvious observation is the shit is just getting worse and worse. In keeping with a near-fevered watch on climate-change matters, I posted yesterday about how new research reflects the shitty-ugly fact earth might be beyond the so-called ‘tipping point‘ to stop, or even curtail the warming.

And in the case of our current heat-sweltering predicament the excessive warming is climate-change related — via The Washington Post this morning:

One of the most extreme heat waves ever observed in the western United States this early in the season is near its climax.
The punishing blast of heat, which began Sunday, has set hundreds of records while simultaneously worsening a historically severe drought, intensifying fires and degrading air quality.

About 40 million Americans have endured triple-digit heat and more than 50 million have been under excessive-heat warnings this week.

After focusing in the northern and central Rockies earlier in the week, the core of the heat has shifted into the Desert Southwest and California’s Central Valley, where scores of additional records are predicted to fall through Saturday.
…
“What we are seeing in the Western U.S. this week — I’d be comfortable calling it a mega-heat wave because it is breaking 100-plus-year records, and it is affecting a wide region,” said Mojtaba Sadegh, a professor at Boise State University who specializes in climate extremes.

The “mega-heat wave” is being supercharged by climate change, scientists say.
“Currently, climate change has caused rare heat waves to be 3 to 5 degrees warmer over most of the United States,” Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, wrote in an analysis published Tuesday.
…
In a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle, the heat has intensified the historic drought plaguing the West, which has, in turn, exacerbated the heat.
Nearly 55-percent of the West is experiencing an “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Soil moisture is at or near the lowest levels seen in more than 120 years in many areas, so energy that would normally go into evaporation is directly heating the air and surfaces instead.

Meanwhile, the hot, dry air has created tinderbox conditions, and blazes have erupted in several states.
The fire risk on Thursday is particularly worrisome because of the prediction for dry lightning in parts of the West, which is a major ignition source.

Be cool.
And to be an asshole, here’s the musical take on the ‘The Sun’s Anvil’ segment from “Lawrence of Arabia,’ composed by the great, Maurice Jarre:

Too hot?

(Illustration out front found here).