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. Even the Ohio Valley is feeling the heat with today to be the first in a string of days where the projected high will reach the low 90s.
In the past week, 1,011 records have been broken around the country, including 251 new daily high temperature records on Tuesday.
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Children and adults chill out in the Cool Zoo water park area at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans, Wednesday.
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.
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 to avoid 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 attack it until midnight, as the fire was too intense and the weather too hot and too dry.
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."
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.
Stabling the carriages meant a glacial-paced day for drivers in a city where, absent special events, summer tourism is traditionally slow.
Tim O'Brien and Lacy Shanks of Kalispell, Mont, were grateful they had caught one of the early tours and glad they didn't have to hoof it. Their visit dovetailed with record-setting temperatures: Tuesday's 102 degrees toppled a more than century-old mark, 99 in 1893.
"It's killing me," O'Brien said.
