We begin tonight with another day of brutal heat in more than half of the country. More than sixty-seven million Americans in thirty-one states saw temperatures top ninety degrees today. The sizzling heat was felt all the way from deserts of Arizona to the lighthouses of Maine. And if that’s not hot enough, nearly forty million of you experienced feels-like temperatures in the triple digits.

The high temperature here in Miami today was ninety-five degrees. But when you factor in the humidity, it felt like a hundred and ten degrees. All part of a heat dome that has parts of the country sweltering. Even by south Florida standards, this heat is excessive. According to the National Weather Service which issued an advisory for the third day in a row. And it’s not just Florida, in Bangor, Maine, near record-high temperatures are keeping firefighters busy with emergency calls. None of us that live in Maine are used to this kind of heat. While in Western New York, people flocked to local pools to stay cool as heat indices approached one hundred. By one calculation, the last three days have broken the record for the hottest average temperature on Earth. For perspective, the number of days above ninety degrees per year in Miami Dade County has been going up according to a county report in 1960, it was eighty-five. Last year, it was a hundred and thirty-three.