On the east coast it’s getting close to quitting time, and if you haven’t stepped outside this afternoon, prepare for a warm surprise. And by warm, I mean ludicrously hot. People often say “it’s like an oven out there” when the weather gets toasty, but this time it isn’t an exaggeration. It feels like you are baking internally if you stay outside for longer than 15 minutes.

This heat wave is taking its toll all across America, and so far 1,011 records have been broken according to the Associated Press. Today, from the Rockies to the Great Plains, thermometers are matching Tuesday, when 251 records were broken. According to the Weather Channel, Denver is 105 (It has got to be hell for the firefighters in the rockies this week). Sidney, Neraska – 111. Ten mid-western cities were hotter than Death valley today (108).

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These area are under a Heat alert from the National Weather Service. Don’t expect things to change much in the next few days. The heat wave isn’t expected to let up until Monday or Tuesday, and even then, they will still be in the mid to upper nineties for most of this area.

Today the wave has spread to the east and south-east, where we have temperatures of 105 in Atlanta, 102 in Louisville, and 100 in Washington DC. The whole damn country is baking right now, and it isn’t pleasant.

A climate scientist at the University of Victoria Andrew Weaver alluded to the fact that we are seeing the precursors of global warming, saying that the heat wave “is bad now by our current definition of bad. Our definition of bad changes. What we see now will be far more common in the years ahead.”

[image: deviant art]