“Heat Dome” Hysteria: When Every Hot Summer Day Becomes a Climate Apocalypse
The media’s obsession with turning every hot day into a climate catastrophe risks numbing the public to real threats.
As summer rolls in, so does the annual ritual of media outlets dusting off their most dramatic weather vocabulary.
As I noted in my previous post, the latest term of choice is “heat dome”, a phrase so becoming overused it’s practically become shorthand for “brace yourself, humanity, the end is nigh.” Never mind that summer has always been hot; now, every spike in the mercury is a “heat dome,” a “scorcher,” or an “exceptionally strong” meteorological supervillain stalking the land.
As an example, here is the most recent report about the heat wave along the East Coast from the always histrionic CNN on the subject of the ‘heat dome” building across the country.
An extremely dangerous heat wave is underway for the eastern half of the United States as a potent heat dome reaches its peak, bringing the hottest temperatures of the year so far – the hottest in years for some cities – and putting tens of millions at risk.
Over 250 daily temperature records could be broken during the peak of the heat on Monday and Tuesday, including both record highs and record warm lows. Temperatures in some locations from Philadelphia to Boston could be the hottest in any month in over a decade. Additional records could fall Wednesday and Thursday.
Sure, a heat dome is a real thing: A massive, stagnant high-pressure system that traps hot air over a large area, leading to prolonged, extreme temperatures.
But in the hands of headline writers, it’s transformed from a technical weather pattern into a boogeyman…one that’s always lurking, always expanding, and always “putting millions more people at risk”. The American Meteorological Society only added “heat dome” to its glossary in 2022, but the media have been using it with wild abandon for years, often interchangeably with “heat wave” or even just “hot weather.”
The graphics used to convey the hysteria are a vivid palette of red, redder, and hellscape red.
#Sprawling Heat Dome Could Smash June Records In Northeast, Midwest, Including 100s In New York, Boston #US #UK #World #Politics #News https://t.co/XCMFCqsmJt
— LUX News💙 (@VaclavusU) June 23, 2025
No “heat dome” story is complete without a nod to climate change. Scientists and politicians alike are quick to link every hot day to global warming, and the media is happy to amplify the message.
This snippet from Associated Press is a classic.
The heat is part of Earth’s long-term warming. Summers in the United States are 2.4 degrees (1.3 degrees Celsius) hotter than 50 years ago, according to NOAA data. Human-caused climate change has made this heat wave three times more likely than without the burning of coal, oil and gas, the climate science nonprofit Climate Central calculated, using computer simulations comparing the current weather to a fictional world without the industrial greenhouse gases.
People are now questioning the “experts”, especially as it pertains to climate modelling.
— Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki (@MatthewWielicki) June 22, 2025
In addition, many scientists with climate expertise are reminding us of the realities of both weather and history. Chris Martz, who recently graduated with a degree in meteorology, notes that it was warmer in 1988.
Let's put this “record” heatwave into perspective.
On THIS date in 1988, 61.7% of the U.S. mainland was >90°F. A staggering 10.8% was >100°F. 🌡️
That's hot! 🥵
Today, only 45% of the CONUS is forecast to top 90°F, and a mere 0.3% to top 100°F.
It's hot. But, it's not 1988. pic.twitter.com/iVpTHbGsPt
— Chris Martz (@ChrisMartzWX) June 23, 2025
Furthermore, the mainstream media appears to be neglecting the cold snap that the western half of the nation is experiencing.
Despite the supposed record-breaking “heat dome” over the Great Lakes and northeast, temperatures in the Lower 48 are overall running 2.4°F below average today thanks to the cold pool that has dumped into the west. pic.twitter.com/Gtoa5KxSUF
— Chris Martz (@ChrisMartzWX) June 23, 2025
Yes, heat domes are real, and yes, they can be dangerous to vulnerable populations (the very young, the very old, and the sick).
But the media’s obsession with turning every hot day into a climate catastrophe risks numbing the public to real threats. When every heat wave is a “heat dome,” and every “heat dome” is a harbinger of doom, it’s easy to roll your eyes and tune out and this is the exact opposite of what responsible journalism should achieve.
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I’m so old I remember when a “heat dome” was called a high pressure center, and temperatures in the 90s was just part of summer.
Notice you seldom see weather maps with fronts and pressure systems on them, anymore.
Symbols is dogwhistles. Maps is rayciss.
And no A/C!!!
Dang. I just dug 4 four 3-ft post holes in my rocky clay pretending to be soil. I didn’t even know I was in danger! I thought it was a touch warmer than I’d like, but we expect it to get a bit warm in the daytime in Louisiana.
And honestly, you’re more worried about gators than heat.
Admittedly, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a gator here big enough to try for me. If I did…gator tail is a nice protein source.
I’m old enough to remember when a Bomb Cyclone was called a thunderstorm and a deadly Polar Vortex was a cold snap we got every winter
“The (oven) walls are closing in!”
Polar vortex = Arctic cold front = Canadian Clipper
Not good for dogs. One thing I can’t quite get used to in suburban TN is it being too hot outside for the dogs.
If they have shade from trees and on a porch (often under it in scrape they made in the dirt) and water then most dogs are gonna be ok. A dog that’s mostly or completely an ‘indoor’ dog suddenly stuck outside? He will definitely have some adjustments to make. The biggest thing in the deep south with pets and heat is ensure they are mobile. So long as they can follow their natural instincts and find a shady, cooler spot and get some water they will be ok. When morons lock dogs into vehicles, chain them up or pen them where they can’t escape to go to shade or get water that’s the true danger.
That said I still bring my dogs into the house and the AC when it gets up to 95 on the heat index. I retired back to the same rural South Alabama area I grew up in and spent literally years in the sandbox with side trips to Africa. Nothing I’ve encountered gets hot like ‘Africa Hot’. Despite all my familiarity and exposure to heat/humidity I don’t take for granted that I’m somehow immune. For someone who moved down here from cooler less humid areas I imagine the heat/humidity of late July through early September was memorable the first year.
That’s why you install pools. Did you think it was for you?
I LOVE watching dogs taking a running leap into a pond or a pool! Retrievers are a real hoot, and German Shepherds (more than one in the same poole) are a hoot to watch.
I heard on The View that in a couple of Midwest states, people had actually melted down into a puddle (like the Wicked Witch of the West).
What a world!
Though for View watchers, that usually indicates rain.
Dramacrats most likely.
Hillary is dead?
Gretchen Whitmer melted into a puddle?
We’re all gonna die!… news at 11.
We’re all gonna die! Women and minorities hardest-hit.
Reading the WaPo huh? Or remembering Rush?
Nope. The Noo Yawk Times. I gave up on Rush when he was down to taking maybe two to three calls per show, and his advertising became the audio equivalent of “product placement” in movies and TV shows. In short, he became tiresome. I DO however love his line about Mark Levin sounding like Groucho Marx’s mother after a hysterectomy. That one put me on the floor!
Here at the edge of TinyTown™ in NW Wyoming we were worried about frost hitting out tomatoes yesterday morning. They had forecast 38F for town, but we’re usually about 5F lower than that. Fortunately it slightly clouded over and we had a temperature of 37F on the back deck, and no frost. Had some fresh snow at elevations over 8,000 feet.
Four days ago we hit 101.4F on the back deck, with an air temperature around 90F. Since our back deck faces south and roasts in the sunshine we usually give up using it for about 3 months and switch to the (shaded) front deck. We basically just follow the cat, who has a very narrow temperature comfort range.
Our academic advisor in Colorado Springs had spent several years at the small boy’s school above town, and had personally seen it snow in EVERY month except July.
And it was on record as having snowed in July.
(We found this out as were discussing our beerball game being delayed by snow… at the end of May.)
I remember as a kid in 1975 or 76 when we had snow flurries during 4th July fireworks. No one died.
In the high deserts of the Great Basin, the climate is highly cyclical both short-term and long-term. I have a book with a newspaper story from the 1920s about a July 2 or 4 that started with a blizzard and ended at >90.
The high desert of SE Oregon has seen drought-drench cycles that prominently influenced Old West history, and which continue now. The media blame this on global warming, of course, but it’s complete bullshit.
There are saline lakes in Malheur, Harney, and Lake counties, each of which are the size of Eastern states. One of them, Lake Abert, north of Lakeview, Oregon, goes up and down regularly. I have seen it. In the 1930s, it dried up completely, and uncovered a pioneer wagon containing the skeleton of a young girl with the telltale marks of being murdered by Indians.
The point here is that, if that wagon made it to where it was found during the dry cycle of the ’30s, the lake had dried up before. Last winter had some of the deepest snowfalls in more than 100 years, and there were floods from the melt a couple months ago.
We just returned from a 1,100-mile trip down there, and the temps that are typically in the 70s or higher barely made it into the low 60s. There was a concert at the Alvord Desert last Saturday. We had tickets but didn’t go because the wind was howling and the temperature at 4 p.m. was 57.
Glo-bull warming. What utter horseshit.
A screen grab I posted when I saw the “heat dome” headline. Traveling to a Salt Lake City wedding with my wife and her mother in a motorhome we rented in Denver, the night we left Teton National Park.
https://x.com/mrtomsr/status/1937255595746189341
Flee east! Next stop: Thermopolis! Home of one of my favorite government signs:
NO SOAP ALLOWED. THIS IS A HEALTH FACILITY!
“You can’t fight in here; this is the war room!”
He was taking pictures! Of the Big Board!
In the southern states we refer to this as summer….lovingly of course. Wait until the humidity climbs a little more.
Except when we call it Helll’s front porch. Which it is this week. Back when I lived in Columbia, SC, I’d go rollerblading even when it touched 100+. Of course that was the last millennium, when I was younger, and in shape.
I know what you mean as I am out of shape. If you happened to live below the ‘gnat line’ it was doubly miserable. Those living there know what I mean.
It’s ominous that a simply rearrangement of letters transforms heat dome into Hate Mode.
Much like insurrection becomes ironic unrest.
But, is it legal?
My sister lives smack in the middle of that red dome of death. Her high will be 87° today. Admittedly that is pretty darn hot for that area, but where I live here in the South it’ll be 87° by 10 a.m. and 96° for the high. 96° for the high? We call that “Tuesday”.
Ain’t nobody gonna die from the heat at 87° that didn’t already have reservations made for heaven or hell (as the case may be).
What will her humidity be?
“But it’s a dry heat…”.
Just back from my morning 5 miles….
For the heck of it I just checked:
As of this moment, the humidity in her location according to my weather app is 59%. Here, it’s 60%.
To be honest I would have expected her humidity to be quite a bit higher.
The “dry heat” thing is just cope. Hot is hot, whether it’s “dry” or not. If you’re not convinced, just stick your head in an oven that’s been baking all day and ask yourself if it would really be all that different if a pan of water had been in there. I guarantee you it’d be just as hot.
I’m stuck in Texas and it is too damn hot here, 13 months out of the year. Don’t even get me going about the venomous snakes and fire ants. Really missing the Midwest.
No, it really does make a difference when your sweat can evaporate. It has to hit 110° here before we feel oppressed; but later you run your hand through your hair and it feels like a boot brush. Visiting the folks in muggy FL, anything over about 87° and we’re knackered.
Harder to diasipate body heat if the humidity is high.
Nonsense. I’m also in Texas.
95 in Amarillo does not feel like 95 in Houston.
95 at 7pm anywhere north of US 59 with a gentle breeze is pleasant.
Look, you transplants can laugh at us about the cold all day long, I’m fine with that. But I find it just as comical when people come to Texas and complain about the alleged heat. I was in Greensboro, NC, one day years ago when it was 80 degrees in the evening with 80% humidity. Thought I was gonna die. I’ll take where I am every day of the week over that garbage.
My GF and I were in Big Bend NP two years ago (going next spring too) and it was so hot and dry that at the end of the day both of us discovered we had dried blood in our noses. Apparently the combination of heat and very low humidity caused the blood vessels in our noses to leak.
This is why they’ve been naming winter storms. And everything is a record or a “near record.” (A near record just means it hasn’t been quite as hot or as cold as it could be.)
I think part of it was to try and drive eyeballs to the Weather Channel. We all know that “If it bleeds, it leads” and that weather doesn’t do much bleeding on a day-to-day basis. Then along came the climate cult and merged with that tendency, and now we have climate alarmism all over anything that deviates from a nice spring day in wherever Beaver Cleaver lived. It’s Goldilocksism turned on its head – if it isn’t :just right” it must be DISASTER!
BTW, we had the first recorded streak of 13+ days over 113F in NE Texas when I was in high school. And I worked in the garden during that streak. Just not very long at any one stretch. And I didn’t have any inkling I was in the midst of Armageddon at the time. Of course, we didn’t have The Weather Channel yet.
“And everything is a record or a “near record.”
Democrat clickbait.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H.L. Mencken
However the moral of the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf is that every so often there really is a wolf, and if you ignore it just because the last three alarms were false you’re the one who will suffer; it’s no skin off the liar’s nose.
I grew up when we did not have air conditioning. Everyone is a bunch of wimps. I the hs football coach’s handing out salt pills before pratice.
I don’t have air conditioning. I do have a clever deal for distributing winter cold from the ground below the basement floor in the summer. A 12″ diameter fabric duct standing vertically one inch above the basement floor, running up the stairs to a few feet short of the computer desk, with a 12v fan in the end blowing on the desk. It’s 95 outside now and 79 degrees at the computer desk. Furthermore the air has been dehumidified by passage through the basement and reheating by mixing as it hits the upstairs. But that was just being clever. It can be powered by a solar panel if I want to go to the trouble.
Really powerful 12v fan. 12″ diameter, by the way. Very hefty breeze.
here is why:
the whole basis is rooted in
environmental justice
which is just another catch-all by lefty to cement their claims of white patriarchy being the root causes of all their troubles
Click hysteria is what the heat index was for. It’s hard to break all time records but it’s easy for the heat index to beat the all time temperature record. Same thing for wind chill and record low temperatures.
If it’s 20 degrees out and there’s a 40mph wind, what’s the temperature of the aluminum flagpole? 20 degrees. A lot of people don’t know that.
they want us to trade
a/c for
aoc
…using computer simulations comparing the current weather to a fictional world without the industrial greenhouse gases.
In other words, comparing two fictional worlds.
Computer simulations don’t show what is happening or what will happen, they show how a theory may work in the real world. They do not prove that the theory is correct. At best, they show that scientists have created a computer model that appears to mimic the real world.
Reminds me of the story about Seymour Papert, who was becoming annoyed at Marvin Minsky’s claims that his “psychoanalytic” program ELIZA mimicked human behavior and therefore could be used to understand it better. Seymour wrote a program that read a line from the keyboard, did absolutely nothing with it, and then looped back to read another line. He gave it to Marvin to try and asked him what human behavior it modeled? Marvin typed a few lines into it, and then grumbled, “The damn thing’s autistic.”
The purpose of computation is understanding, not numbers. – Hamming, in the motto of his numerical analysis book.
Those were the days before big costly government contract projects offering numbers and in particular not caring about understanding. They do seem to be opposites.
Mid 90’s with clear blue skies is beautiful weather.
This is how sick america has become:
“They disagree with you,” play-by-play announcer Pam Ward said to Lobo after officials reviewed a call and came to the opposite conclusion.
“They do, and I disagree with them,” Lobo responded. “And that’s fine. That’s what makes America great, right, Pam Ward?”
That comment was a supreme no-no, apparently. After a prolonged and awkward silence, Lobo said, “I should rephrase that.”
In perhaps the most ESPN move of all time, an analyst has apologized for saying, “That’s what makes America great,” during a WNBA broadcast over the weekend.
Ward responded, “Yes.”
Perhaps a version of entropy could be defined that would equalize everything at the same heat index. Systems in thermal contact change until they have the same heat index. This means that the change in heat index per unit of energy is the same for the two systems, thus producing a maximum when they’re equal.
Also ignored: in the area under the current “heat dome” people were wearing winter coats on Memorial Day weekend.
The leftist media has 3 causes for all things bad:
1. Donald Trump
2. Racism
3. Climate Change
I think they spin a wheel to choose.
Why not all 3 all the time
I have their wheel from five years ago.
Our current global mean temperature is among the coldest temperatures in the past 450 million years:
Graph:
https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/science.adk3705/asset/8d762ca5-65f7-4691-9ef0-6ef25ea3f61f/assets/images/large/science.adk3705-fa.jpg
Full story:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3705
Weather and climate are two related but different concepts. Climate is characterized by averages and trends of at least 20 years. The climate for any region on the earth has generally been a slow change in progress. Whereas weather can exhibit wild fluctuations day to day or even hour to hour. The national BS detector goes off every time anyone announces that some bad and extreme weather condition (or forest fire) is due to climate change. These are statements are made without any basis in current knowledge. The promulgator of such BS is trying to sell a solution looking for a problem. Be wary of said solutions – they almost certainly will not address the perceived problem but one can be assured that these solutions will result in massive foreseen and unforeseen costs.
‘Climate’ is accumulated weather.
They are not different concepts.
They are different. Even “weather” and “season” are different, despite the much reduced time scale encompassed by a season. In winter when I was a boy, my mother would have me dress as if it were freezing outside even if it was 55. She would say, “One warm day doesn’t make it summer.” (I would think “If it was 30 in the middle of summer, would you send me out in shorts because one cold day doesn’t make it winter?”) My point being that seasons, like climate, is about trends while weather is about hour by hour fluctuations, as Arnoldn commented. My mother didn’t understand that weather and seasons were related but different concepts, apparently.
Here in the Pacific NW, several cities recorded record low high temperatures last week. Not a peep from the media, naturally.
Here just outside Phoenix, we actually had spring this year. We never have spring. And it looks like we’re looking forward to Indian Spring next week.
Are you sure these are maps of Heat Domes?
They look more like Socialism Domes to me.
Giant nipples, centered over DC and NO VA.
Come on, you can’t unsee it.
Since 1963 when I was five years old I’ve been going down to Rockport, Texas just twenty-five miles up the Gulf of America from Corpus Christi, Texas.
Two of the picturesque roads run right along Aransas Bay and there are many stretches where if you opened your car door you are no more than four paces from getting your feet wet.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xZtpezUpNGoPzMeZ9
The water level in Aransas Bay hasn’t changed one iota in the last 62 years.
Yes there are days when the wind is blowing hard and the tide is high were water will spraying up on to the roads but that is also why one of the roads is called “Water Street” and another one is called “Fulton Beach Road..”
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xJNVy1Rom8fbbxCX9
not too far from gulf of maine so humidty an issue, presently (1410hrs) my weather station (ambient ws-2902 reporting id KMEETNA4) reporting 96.3 with index of 116f. I have diaphragm issues so have to be careful in this stuff.
air conditioners work, 70f inside house 🙂
I saw that there were 90-degree temps in Alaska the week before last. The usual suspects were calling it “climate change,” but it took me 30 seconds to learn at Alaska’s highest recorded temp was 100 degrees at Ft. Yukon on June 27, 1915. Not only are the media liars, but they are lazy liars.
Lazy liars are all you really need when the marks are stupid enough.
If only Greta Thunberg had spent more time recently enlightening us about climate change.
Curiosity question, has anyone factored in the effect of the bazillions of yards of concrete and roofs we have added over the past 50+ years? It soaks up heat, radiates it to the air and makes it even more miserable. I know that the city fathers and developers would die if we were always expanding the suburbs, but maybe we need to admit when enough concrete has been poured.
The heat island effect is well-known. Climate change modelers have likely overstated its effect.
I think they’ve most likely understated it, because it’s inconvenient to their argument.
So if there’s a ‘heat dome’ in the Northern hemisphere, and cold weather in the South, is the planet heating, cooling, or showing climate change?
Seems like heads they win, tails you lose, and edge is armageddon!
I was watching the Braves game last night up in NY against the Mets and the announcers (inadvertently I’m sure) said “this is the hottest day in over 25 years in NY” which basically provides support for (1) it’s been hotter before so “climate change” has little/anything to do with it and (2) it’s called summer for a reason.