Tornado Kills 3 in Texas and Injures Dozens
It’s not unusual for officials in Texas to issue heat advisories around this time of year, said Monte Oaks, a meteorologist at the Weather Service’s San Antonio office. They typically do so when high temperatures combine with other factors, including high humidity and westerly winds that blow hot air from high-altitude deserts, he added.
In this case, Mr. Oaks said, the humidity is high because Texas had a wetter and stormier spring than usual. That has left parts of the state looking lusher than they normally do in June, he said. But it also means that the hot ground is “cooking a lot of the moisture” and releasing it into the air.
Electricity demand is expected to rise in the state later this week because of the hot weather, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages about 90 percent of the state’s electricity load, said in a statement on Wednesday. But there is enough supply to meet the demand, the company added, and it does not expect an “energy emergency.”
Global warming is making dangerously hot weather more common, and more extreme, on every continent. In Texas and neighboring Mexico, it is making excessive heat forecast over the next few days at least five times more likely, according to an analysis on Wednesday by Climate Central, a nonprofit research collaboration of scientists and journalists.
In the Perryton area on Thursday, the Texas Department of Public Safety was assisting with traffic control and other needs, Cindy Barkley, a spokeswoman for the department, said by phone. The Ochiltree County Sheriff’s Office said it could not provide information about the extent of the damage, or whether anyone had been injured.
Source: The New York Times
