By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, ROXANA HEGEMAN and SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press
Feeling hot? It's not a mirage. Across the United States, hundreds of heat records have fallen in the past week.
From the wildfire-consumed Rocky Mountains to the bacon-fried sidewalks of Oklahoma, the temperatures are creating consequences ranging from catastrophic to comical.
In the past week, 1,011 records have been broken around the country, including 251 new daily high temperature records on Tuesday.
Those numbers might seem big, but they're hard to put into context — the National Climatic Data Center has only been tracking the daily numbers broken for a little more than a year, said Derek Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the center.
Still, it's impressive, given that records usually aren't broken until the scorching months of July and August.
"Any time you're breaking all-time records in mid- to late-June, that's a healthy heat wave," Arndt said.
If forecasts hold, more records could fall in the coming days in the central and western parts of the country, places accustomed to sweating out the summer.
The current U.S. heat wave "is bad now by our current definition of bad," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, but "our definition of bad changes. What we see now will be far more common in the years ahead."
No matter where you are, the objective is the same: stay cool.
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NIGHTTIME FIREFIGHTING
Wildfires pack intense heat, but soaring temperatures and whipping winds are piling on the men and women battling the blazes raging across the Rocky Mountains.
U.S. Forest Service firefighter Owen Johnson had to work overnight and avoided the piping-hot daytime temperatures in the region, which toppled records in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. On Tuesday, Colorado Springs reached 101 degrees, and Miles City in eastern Montana soared to 111 degrees, the highest ever recorded in that area.
A call came in after Johnson's regular shift Monday in the Helena National Forest in Montana. A wildfire was racing through the Scratchgravel Hills, threatening at least 200 homes. But firefighters had to wait to pose a direct attack until midnight, when the temperatures cooled and the wind died down.
On Tuesday morning, Johnson figured he had worked more than 24 hours, and probably wouldn't quit until the sun went down.
His sweaty hands gripping a banana and a cup of coffee, he gave a tired shrug when asked to compare this fire to others in his 13-year career.
"Every fire's different," he said. "They all pose their own risks and challenges."
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PRAYING FOR RAIN
On the treeless, windswept Kansas prairie, the searing mix of sun and triple-digit heat is a recipe for agricultural disaster.
Some residents have taken to praying for rain and cooler temperatures in this sparsely populated western part of the state. Menlo farmer Brian Baalman can testify to that.
"Everybody is just sick of it. They just wish we would get a good rain," he said. "It has become a point to pray for it at church on Sunday, for sure."
Temperatures in the area have hovered around 111 degrees or higher for the past four days, and nine cities in western Kansas broke records on Tuesday.
Only in the earliest morning hours do hardy farmers dart out to ensure their livestock's water troughs are filled and their irrigation wells are quenching parched crops. They quickly return to cooler locales.
Much of the fortunes in the Menlo area are tied to corn crops, whose yields contribute not only to foodstuffs but also to ethanol-blended gasoline. But day after unyielding day of blazing sun and high heat have baked the top six inches of soil, and plant roots can break through to the moister soil below.
"It is getting to look ugly, the longer this keeps going on without a drink," Baalman said.
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CARRIAGE-FREE FRENCH QUARTER
It was 10:30 a.m., prime time for mule-drawn carriages to cart tourists through New Orleans' historic French Quarter.
But nary a carriage rumbled down the streets — where it was already 97 degrees — because of a city ordinance.
"We have to take the mules in when it hits 95," tour guide Robert Rotherham said Wednesday, trying to coax his mule, Miss Pierre, to drink from a trough.
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