Hi, I'm Dan Premak, and welcome to Axios Recap, where we dig into one big story.

Today is Monday, June 28. Jule will pay up for targeting teens. Mount Everest climbers say

they've come down with COVID, and we're focused on the Pacific Northwest's heat dome.

Temperatures in Portland, Oregon today are expected to break the all-time record

that was set just yesterday when the high was 112 degrees.

Now, this isn't just about people being sweaty and uncomfortable.

Buildings and infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest are not designed for this sort of heat,

as evidenced by a photo of transit power cables literally melting. And even if you're in the minority of

people in a city like Seattle that actually have air conditioning, a recent drought has sapped

much of the hydroelectric power used to run it. So what's happening? Well, the basic scientific

explanation is this is a so-called heat dome,

or a very strong high pressure system that's basically sitting over the region, in which the sinking

air heats on its way down to Earth. There's also some unfortunate geography in play in which

air blowing around this heat dome is moving from east to west, and as it does so, the air descends from

mountainous regions to the coasts, warming as it goes.

In fact, the heat dome is so strong, and the temperature is so unusual that this is an event

that could only be expected to occur once every couple thousand years.

But as researchers tell my colleague Andrew Friedman, climate change is making these kinds of

rare events hotter and also more common and more protracted. Short term, this is a public health

emergency because extreme heat can be a killer. Longer term, it's about climate change and how we

build or rebuild where we live and work. In 15 seconds,

we'll talk with Axios climate reporter Andrew Friedman about what's happening in the Pacific

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