The heat wave scorching Texas and other parts of the United States has also brought triple-digit temperatures across Mexico, especially in the country’s northern states.
The conditions have raised concerns about the possibility of a sharp spike in deaths and illnesses caused by the surging temperatures, as well as the stress being placed on the energy grid.
Mexico has registered at least 112 heat-related deaths so far this year, with more than half of those occurring in one northern state, Nuevo León, according to the health ministry. That compares with just four heat-related deaths registered in the same period last year across the country.
The arrival of rain in recent days delivered relief to some places in Mexico, while the “heat dome,” formed by high-pressure atmospheric conditions combined with climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean, has been drifting out of Mexican territory into the southern United States.
Still, blistering temperatures are baking parts of northern Mexico. Temperatures in the city of Hermosillo in northwestern Mexico are forecast to hover around 109 degrees through the weekend, after surging to 121 degrees on Sunday, among the highest temperatures registered anywhere in the world that day.
Mexicali, across the border from Calexico, in California, is expected to reach 117 degrees in the coming days.
Rafael Trejo Vázquez, deputy manager of forecasting at Mexico’s national meteorological service, said that a 22-day span of abnormally hot weather that finally abated last week was the first heat wave since 2017 to have lasted so long.
“It is not normal,” Mr. Trejo Vázquez said, explaining that this was the third heat wave to hit Mexico this year.
The sweltering conditions are fueling conflicting accounts of the impacts on heat-stricken communities, reflecting how even an exceptional heat wave is a politically sensitive issue in Mexico. Local authorities in some parts of the country have provided alarming estimates of heat-related casualties, only to have more high-ranking officials discredit their assessments.
A state civil registry official in Nuevo León, a highly industrialized state in northeast Mexico, said on Tuesday that there had been 850 heat-related deaths in the state in recent weeks. But the state government swiftly issued a denial.
Subsequent reports of heat-related deaths have pointed to much lower figures. In Nuevo León, health officials said on Wednesday that they had recorded 36 heat-related deaths, including 20 on June 11.
At the same time, soaring temperatures drove record electricity consumption during the first three weeks of June. People across the country have been complaining about blackouts and recurring power outages, even though the federal government has sought to play down those reports.
Authorities in the city of Chihuahua, in northern Mexico, said that surging demand for electricity resulted in power failures affecting dozens of wells accounting for about 30 percent of the city’s water…
2023-06-29 07:26:13
Source from www.nytimes.com
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