Wednesday 15 June 2022 07:10 AM Emergency declared as Texas city out of WATER: Brutal 'heat dome' settles over ... trends now
Emergency workers in Odessa, Texas were dishing out bottled water on Tuesday as a burst pipeline emptied the city's taps, amid 102 degree temperatures in a powerful heatwave.
Power was knocked out across swathes of Ohio on Tuesday night thanks to the grid being overloaded and storm damage, leaving 230,000 without power. Columbus, the state capital, had extensive outages.
Andrew Ginther, the mayor, tweeted that American Electric Power was working to restore the power to 169,000 homes in the Columbus area.
'AEP is dealing with the damage from last night's storms plus high demand because of excessive heat,' he said.
'They are working to restore power to everyone. I know it's tough — I'm without power at my house as well.'
AEP tweeted: 'AEP Ohio customers in the Columbus area who are currently without power should prepare for the outage to potentially continue into Thursday.
'We know it's hot and understand how uncomfortable and inconvenient this is for our customers, especially in this extreme heat.'
The intense heat is being created by a 'heat dome' - an area of high pressure creating a lid which traps any escaping radiation and sends it back to the ground, while the sun's rays continue to penetrate through.
Crews are seen at work in Odessa, Texas on Tuesday, trying to repair the burst water pipe that has left many in the city of 113,000 without water, as temperatures reached 102 degrees
The burst water pipe came at a terrible moment, with a 'heat dome' above much of the central United States
Volunteers are seen handing out emergency cases of water to Odessa's residents on Tuesday
Odessa Fire Rescue cadet Benjamin Magallanez, right, loads a cart with a box of emergency drinking water for an Odessa resident on his bicycle as city officials distribute emergency water supplies to those in need on Tuesday
Officials are working to try and provide bottled water to all of those in the Texan city without water
A man can be seen handing out a crate of bottled water to an Odessa resident on Tuesday, at one of several distribution centers across the city
On Monday night and into Tuesday, 125 million people - a third of the population - were under heat alerts across much of the central and eastern states.
Cities such as Tulsa, Memphis, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Raleigh and Charlotte were all under the heat warnings.
Chicago residents on Monday fled to their basements and nearby shelters when a surprise tornado ripped through the city as it experienced 100F weather for the first time in a decade.
About 44,000 people were left without power after a tornado hit during Monday's afternoon rush hour, bringing 80 mph winds and powerful storms throughout the area that knocked the lights out for residents.
The National Weather Service forecast that
