As most people were in quarantine - grieving over the fact that they cannot make their times memorable - during the summer of 2020, the excitement for this year’s summer grew larger and larger. The phrase “Hot Girl Summer” became viral, referring to how people will be outside once again in their favorite outfits, all confident and tanned like a “hot girl”. But our planet decided to take this phrase a little too seriously; this year, an unprecedented heat wave swept through the United States, warning people about the urgency of global warming.

This year’s heat wave was in fact not “just another heat wave,” but was rather “the most anomalous extreme heat event ever observed on Earth since records began two centuries ago,” according to Christopher Burt, an expert on world weather extremes. The Pacific Northwest was impacted the most, with Seattle reaching 108 degrees and Portland 116. The increase in temperature created absurd situations where eggs and bacons were able to be cooked using the heat of the road and rubber duck ornaments inside the car melted into blobs. At least, these incidents were humorous and could be simply ignored - but these certainly were not the only consequences. 

The drastic changes in temperature created large scale natural disasters like tornadoes, wildfires, and excessive rain along with flooding, impacting hundreds and thousands of people’s lives. The high temperature also directly threatened not only the elders and the youth but also the entire ecosystem and the millions of organisms. Considering the fact that this year’s unprecedented heat wave was created “virtually impossible” without human influence, global warming has directly shown its influence, and the situation seems more urgent than most people think. Without proper action, this “Hot Girl Summer” of ours may be the coldest summer of the rest of our lives. 

Works Cited:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/07/pacific-northwest-heat-wave-climate/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/08/heat-wave-west-california-nevada/