Phoenix swelters above 110F for entire month of July as wildfires erupt in California

Monday marked the 31st day in a row that Arizona’s largest city - one of the fastest-growing in the United States - experienced potentially deadly levels of heat

The city of Phoenix has gone for an entire month with temperatures above a broiling 110F (43.3C), an unprecedented stretch even for a city known as the “Valley of the Sun”.

Monday marked the 31st day in a row that Arizona’s largest city – one of the fastest-growing in the United States – experienced potentially deadly levels of heat.

Phoenix is far from alone. Temperatures have entered uncharted territory around the world this summer due to an emerging El Niño pattern and the ever-worsening climate crisis driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

Scientists announced last week that July 2023 is the hottest month on record – and possibly in 120,000 years.

“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on the findings.

More than 46 million people in the US were under heat advisories and alerts on Monday with warnings of excessive temperatures in parts of Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas and Louisiana.

That number could double this week as the National Weather Service (NWS) warned that more than 100 million people in central and southern areas may experience “dangerous” heat indexes, the “real-feel” of temperatures, of 105F (40C) or above.

There will be little opportunity to cool off as temperatures won’t drop much overnight and several nightime heat records could be broken, NWS warned.

In California, the high temperatures have played a role in recent wildfire outbreaks. A massive fire was raging out of control in a remote canyon of the Mojave National Preserve on Sunday, worsened by erratic wind patterns.

The York Fire had crossed the state line from California into Nevada on Sunday and sent smoke further east into the Las Vegas Valley.

To the southwest, the Bonny Fire was holding steady at around 3.4 square miles in the rugged hills of Riverside County, as more than 1,300 people were ordered to evacuate from their homes.

The fire risk remained elevated in parts of southern California on Monday as temperatures stayed above 100F.