Mapping the Extreme Heat Belt

Last Monday the First Street Foundation released data from its analysis of how current and future extreme heat events will impact American neighborhoods. Enter your zip-code into the First Street Foundation website and you can view the risk that your home faces over the next thirty years from extreme heat (and also the risk to your home from wildfire and flooding). The First Street Foundation hyperlocal extreme heat data has also been used by the Washinton Post and Axios to map the growing dangers of extreme heat across the United States.

Axios has used the extreme heat data to map an Extreme Heat Belt that they say will soon emerge in the USA. The Axios map shows the counties in America where the heat index could reach 125°F at least one day a year by 2053. According to Axios an 'extreme heat belt' will exist in 30 years time, stretching from Texas to Illinois, where people can expect at least once a year to experience deadly temperatures.

Currently only 8 million Americans are exposed to extreme heat days each year. Thanks to global heating by 2053 that number is expected to rise to 107 million. If you hover over a county on the Axios map you can find out if that county currently experiences extreme heat days and whether it will in 30 years time.

The Washington Post has also used the First Foundation data to map out the number of dangerous heat days that you can expect where you live by 2053. If you think that this summer was too hot then I've got some bad news for you. Thanks to global heating it is going to get much hotter. According to the Washington Post map by 2053 "two-thirds of Americans will experience perilous heat waves, with some regions in the South expected to endure more than 70 consecutive days over 100 degrees."

In More dangerous heat waves are on the way: See the impact by Zip code you can find out how many days of dangerous heat you can expect each year where you live in thirty years time. Just enter your zip-code into the Post's map to discover how many days of dangerous heat you currently experience on average every year and how many days you can expect in 2053. The Washington Post defines 'dangerous heat' as temperatures over 100 degrees.