Within 24 hours, U.S. communities faced a series of severe weather threats that left hundreds of thousands without power in the Midwest, trapped flooded communities in Montana without clean drinking water, triggered tornado warnings in Chicago and left millions stranded.
These are the extreme weather conditions that the US suffered on Monday.
Heavy storms in the Upper Midwest and Ohio River Valley left more than 620,000 customers without power early Tuesday, according to PowerOutage.us, with more than 370,000 outages in Ohio alone. Storms triggered a tornado in Chicago during rush hour, with gusts of up to 84 miles per hour hitting the city. The same storm system brought strong winds and rain to parts of western Ohio, Michigan and northern Indiana, generating more than 200 wind reports in the area, including a 98 mph gust in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Millions withstand the dangerous heat

A heat dome that engulfed the southwest with heat and humidity last week shifted to the central US and put more than 125 million people in the area under heat warnings. This is more than a third of the US population enduring potentially dangerous heat levels. Several cities hit record highs on Monday afternoon, including Asheville, North Carolina, St. Louis and Nashville. In the North Platte of Nebraska, the temperature jumped to a record 108 degrees.
The heat will continue to travel northeast into the upper Mississippi Valley, the western Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley and will continue to build Tuesday over the southern Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, according to the Weather Forecast Center.
More than 100 million people are on some sort of heat alarm on Tuesday. Overheating forecasts have forced some schools in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin to announce that classes will be canceled, closed early, or moved online this week.
Even after this heat dome recedes, the relief could be short-lived. Heat waves will become more common and more serious, experts say. “Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves around the world, tilting the scale in the direction of higher temperatures,” said CNN meteorologist and climate expert Brandon Miller. “In the United States, record high temperatures are now more than twice as likely to occur as record low temperatures,” according to the US National Climate Assessment.

Extreme levels of flood danger were announced in at least 40 places on Sunday, killing at least 40 people

Heavy rains and rapid snowfall have caused extreme flooding and erosion of the road in Yellowstone National Park and some surrounding communities, forcing officials to close the park to incoming visitors and leaving many nearby residents unable to escape. of violated roads. Communities north of the park are experiencing dramatic flooding, including Montana County Park, where cities have been isolated and surrounded by water, according to an update on the county’s Facebook page.
In neighboring Carbon County, Montana, utility lines were threatened by flooding, leaving many Red Lodge customers without power and leading officials to issue a boiling water alert, officials said.
Rapid waters have left homes damaged or completely swept away, images and videos show. A video shows a multi-storey house collapsing in the rushing waters and being completely engulfed by the flood as the underlying foundation collapses. Roads and bridges in Yellowstone National Park were also at risk from flooding, officials said. Videos released by the park show large sections of asphalt roads completely washed away or severely eroded.
The park began evacuating people on Monday due to road and bridge failures, as well as concerns about forecasts for more rain and possible water and sewer problems.
Rainfall levels above 400% above the average in the region, combined with near-record temperatures causing snow to melt in high-altitude areas, have flooded rivers and streams at record levels. The Yellowstone River in Montana’s Corwin Springs reached 13.88 feet on Monday afternoon, surpassing the all-time high of 11.5 feet since 1918, according to NOAA River Meter data. CNN’s Brandon Miller, Haley Brink, Joe Sutton, Raja Razek, Sara Smart, Amanda Jackson and Claudia Dominguez contributed to this report.