No end in sight for searing Texas heatwave as grid operator urges residents to conserve power

Texas has been hit by historic temperatures for more than 10 days

A record-breaking heat wave in Texas is likely to continue through the Fourth of July holiday and expand across eight states, weather forecasters warned.

Texas has been hit by historically-high temperatures for more than 10 days, with dozens of records broken in the past week.

San Angelo hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit (F) on Tuesday and Wednesday, beating the previous all-time record high by three degrees. Rio Grande Village reached a temperature of 118F, two degrees off the all-time state record.

“As much as we don’t want to tweet this … We did hit 114° here at the office in San Angelo today. So that means we have tied our all-time record high, set approximately 24 hours ago,” the local National Weather Service (NWS) office said.

The death of a postal worker in Dallas, where the heat index reached 115 degrees, has been blamed on the brutal heat.

Around 50 million people were under heat alerts stretching from Arizona to Arkansas on Saturday.

Computer models suggest the heat will expand into Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri and also eastward into Arkansas and Louisiana.

Scientists say that a historically intense heat dome over northern Mexico is responsible for trapping heat underneath is and causing the heatwave.

“There is really no end in sight for the excessive heat that has plagued particularly Texas/southeastern New Mexico in recent days,” the NWS said on Friday.

And it added: “Temperatures over 100°F and heat indices much higher will continue expanding east into the Lower Mississippi Valley and north toward the central Plains next week.”

Last week Texas’s power grid operator asked residents to voluntarily cut back on electricity due to anticipated record demand caused by the heat.

The request by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which serves most of that state’s nearly 30 million residents, was the first it has made this year.

Climate change is making heatwaves five times more likely, according to data from Climate Central.

“Human-caused climate change made the extreme and extremely unusual temperatures in Mexico and the southern US much more likely. Heat this intense, this early in the year will create stressful conditions for millions of people,” said Andrew Pershing, vice president for science at Climate Central.