Climate Point: Record-breaking and dangerous heat wave hits the Southwest

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I’m Erin Rode in Palm Springs, California.

Temperatures here are set to reach record highs this week as the first extended heat wave of the season arrives. Temperatures could reach as hot as 115 degrees, and forecasted highs are as much as 15 degrees above normal. 

These hot temperatures are part of a dangerous and potentially deadly heat wave expected across the Southwest this weekend, with more than 22 million people in California, Nevada and Arizona under some sort of heat-related alert for at least part of the upcoming weekend, Derrick Bryson Taylor reports for the New York Times. 

And it isn’t cooling down anytime soon — this is the beginning of a summer season that’s expected to see above-normal temperatures across almost all of the lower 48 states in June, July and August, according to a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

This type of extreme weather driven by climate change could lead to a summer of blackouts across the U.S., reports Evan Halper for the Washington Post. While rolling outages have become familiar in places like California and Texas, other states from New Mexico to North Dakota are now warning of potential outages this summer as the combination of extreme weather and the early retirement of fossil fuel plants have sped up the destabilization of the country’s aging power grid, Halper reports. 

Here are some other stories of interest this week. 

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The outdoors

Inclusion in outdoor spaces. Two years ago, a private online networking group for Black people pursuing careers in the sciences began chatting about an event to promote Black birders, resulting in the first national Black Birders Week, writes Kyle Bagenstose with USA Today. The national event came after the 2020 murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, and after a white woman called 9-1-1 on Christian Cooper, a leader of New York City’s birdwatching community, after he asked her to follow park rules and leash her dog. 

In the past two years, Black Birders Week has grown, with events now online and in person in cities across the U.S. But the end goal of expanding inclusion in outdoor spaces remains far from fulfilled, with one recent study finding that a historical gap between the ratio of white and Black Americans going outdoors has only widened during the pandemic. National Geographic has announced that it will air a new television series, “Extraordinary Birder,” hosted by Christian Cooper. 

Activist anglers. Fly fishers spend a lot of time paying close attention to their surrounding environment as they wade knee-deep into streams to cast their lines. This has also given them an up-close look at how climate change is changing fishing calendars and threatening fly fishing, Dinah Voyles Pulver reports for USA Today. Some fly fishers are now becoming climate activists to save their sport.