When will it end? Idaho heat wave to produce many more 100-degree days in Boise
Though Boise has missed the stunning temperatures that have settled on much of the Pacific Northwest this week, the unusually hot weather that has sunk into the Treasure Valley in recent days isn’t going away anytime soon.
Temperatures in the Treasure Valley are expected to top 100 degrees every day through July 8, according to the National Weather Service.
If the forecast comes to pass, it will break the record for the longest streak of 100-plus degree days, according to Korri Anderson, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Boise office.
The current record is nine days, which was set from June 26 to July 4 in 2015, Anderson said.
Already, temperatures in Boise have hit 100 degrees daily since Monday for a total of four days. If the forecast holds through July 8, the new record would be 11 days. Meridian, Nampa and Eagle are also expected to see 100-plus degree days through Thursday of next week.
An excessive heat warning is in place in the region until Saturday evening, which the weather service may extend further.
And though the weather service doesn’t forecast temperatures beyond seven days due to unreliability, it says the hot weather is unlikely to stop then.
“Through the 15th (of July), it looks fairly favorable for above-average temperatures to continue,” meteorologist Katy Branham told the Idaho Statesman by phone.
She added that while Boise has previously seen hotter days than those of the past week, a stretch of consistently high temperatures for this long is unusual.
“To have that many in a row is significant,” she said.
Scientists who study Earth’s climate have found that extreme heat waves have increased in length and intensity since at least the 1950s, with the excess heat causing an increase in the likelihood of deaths in some regions. In 2019, The Associated Press found that daily hot-weather records were twice as common as daily cold-weather records over the previous 20 years.
Mojtaba Sadegh, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Boise State University, told the Statesman he thinks the current stretch of extreme heat is “without any doubt” connected to climate change, which is largely caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
He said that climate change has increased both the length of individual heat waves as well as the season when heat waves occur across the globe.
“Heat waves can happen with or without climate change, but the intensity we’re seeing is certainly, without a doubt, attributed to climate change,” he said.
