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A severe heat wave has set new record highs for several cities in Southern California. The National Weather Service says the thermometer hit 112 degrees in Lancaster, breaking the old record of 110 degrees set for the same day in 1961.

The service says a record high temperature was set at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank with 111 degrees. That breaks the old record of 106 degrees set for this date in 2008. Forecasters expect Monday to be the peak of the heat wave. Officials say about 20,000 customers were without electricity when outages were at their worst Monday.

First, the good news: This winter, much of the Sierra had a near-average snowpack. Now, the bad news: It has melted early.

Word of the vanishing Sierra snowpack, which usually helps replenish reservoir levels later in the summer, arrives amid uncertainty over how California’s dams will be managed in coming months to protect endangered fish. It also comes at a critical juncture for urban water officials across the state. Wednesday is their deadline to submit updated drought conservation plans that lay out projections of how much water will be available to customers over the next three years.

California’s drought and a bark beetle epidemic have caused the largest die-off of Sierra Nevada forests in modern history, raising fears that trees could come crashing down on people or fuel deadly wildfires that could wipe out mountain communities.

Aerial images show vast forests that have turned a rust-color. The epidemic has killed an estimated 40 million trees since 2010 in the central and southern Sierra, and it’s spreading north.

If trees could talk about the weather, Dave Meko would be out of a job.

Meko, a professor from the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, has made a career out of interpreting stories about rainfall, stream flows, climate patterns and most importantly, droughts silently hidden within California’s ancient pine trees.

 

It’s a dry heat, Phoenix residents like to say about Arizona’s hot weather. That bravado may vanish as the thermometer flirts with 120 degrees this weekend.

Phoenix won’t be alone in the oven. A strengthening ridge of high pressure lifting out of Mexico is on course to also scorch other parts of Arizona and southeast California, bringing potentially record-shattering temperatures. Though accustomed to triple digits, the upcoming heat spell is a rarity in Phoenix, a desert metropolis of 1.5 million people, raising concerns of heat stroke.