'Dangerous' heat is set to 'engulf' much of the eastern half of the US over the next 24 hours - and some areas could clock their hottest temperatures so far this year, forecasters have said. In Texas, however, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state's grid operator, did forecast that demand would set new records next week on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday as the heatwave lingers. One billion cubic feet of gas is usually enough to supply about five million US homes for a day.ĭespite the extreme heat, however, no US grid operators have taken more extreme actions to manage supply and demand - like calls for conservation or rotating outages - and none were projecting that power use would break all-time highs this week. To keep providing air conditioners with electricity, data provider Refinitiv forecast power generators would burn about 52.9 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of gas on Friday, which would top the current record of 52.3 bcfd on Thursday and recent highs of 50.3 bcfd on 14 July and 49.6 bcfd on 20 July, 2022. Meteorologists said Friday will be the hottest day of the summer so far in the lower 48 states of the US - and the second hottest on record. US power generators will likely burn a record amount of natural gas for a second day in a row today, the hottest day so far this summer, as homes and businesses crank up their air conditioners amid a brutal heatwave.Īs we reported earlier in our 4.10pm post, 'dangerous' levels of heat are forecast for much of the eastern United States. Read more from our feature on what could happen next. Would you support such a change? And others to help us adapt to the heat? 'We need to change the school holiday system so people can go in the spring and autumn, so people can avoid these ridiculous mid-summer temperatures,' he said.

So what should happen in future summers, if more of them will face this sort of disruption to our plans?Ĭhris Haslam, travel writer at The Times, suggested the timings of the school holidays could change to avoid families being restricted to travelling in the hottest months. And the countries where our food comes from. However, everyone agrees the last 10 days feel like a turning point.Īs experts have pointed out elsewhere in these pages, we cannot escape climate change - even if we're from the UK, our holidays will be impacted. The big takeaway today seems to be that the immediate emergency is easing across much of Europe.įingers crossed, next week will not be dominated by stories of tourists fleeing wildfires. An investigation is under way in the Philippines into the deaths of at least 27 people, who died when a boat overturned during a typhoon.A 'dangerous' heatwave is affecting up to 200 million people in the eastern United States.A new fire was reported in Italy near the border with France.There were explosions there on Thursday because of wildfires but evacuations ensured no one was hurt An exclusion zone remained in place around an ammunition depot at an air base in central Greece.Blazes have been brought under control on Rhodes and Corfu.

Although the risk of fire was still officially categorised as 'very high' for several regions, this was an improvement from 'extreme danger' throughout the past week. Wildfire control improved across Greece, too.

Weather conditions improved along the Croatian coast and in Sicily, allowing firefighters to bring blazes under control there.

Here's a quick recap of some of the key developments on Friday: We're bringing our live updates to an end for now. Thank you for following our coverage of wildfires in the Mediterranean and extreme weather across the world.

Ghost freefall