Western Wildfires
A plume of smoke rises behind homes on the Waldo Canyon wildfire west of Colorado Springs, Colo., on Wednesday, June 27, 2012. A large number of home...
A plume of smoke rises behind homes on the Waldo Canyon wildfire west of Colorado Springs, Colo., on Wednesday, June 27, 2012. A large number of homes were destroyed by the fire Tuesday night in subdivisions west of Colorado Springs. Authorities say it remains too dangerous for them to fully assess the damage from a destructive wildfire threatening Colorado's second-largest city. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)
Western Wildfires
A plume of smoke rises behind homes on the Waldo Canyon wildfire west of Colorado Springs, Colo., on Wednesday, June 27, 2012. Authorities say it rem...
A plume of smoke rises behind homes on the Waldo Canyon wildfire west of Colorado Springs, Colo., on Wednesday, June 27, 2012. Authorities say it remains too dangerous for them to fully assess the damage from a destructive wildfire threatening Colorado's second-largest city. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)
Weather Heat Records
In this Tuesday, June 26, 2012 photo, In this Tuesday, June 26, 2012 photo, a girl waits to cross a downtown Seattle cross walk under the rain. Acro...
In this Tuesday, June 26, 2012 photo, In this Tuesday, June 26, 2012 photo, a girl waits to cross a downtown Seattle cross walk under the rain. Across the United States, hundreds of heat records have fallen in the past week, but Washington state's largest city has seen lower than average temperatures to kick off summer. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)
Hundreds of heat-related records recently have fallen across the United States.
In the past week, 1,011 records have been broken around the country, including 251 new daily high temperature records on Tuesday.
The heat is creating consequences ranging from the catastrophic to the comical, from wildfires in the Rocky Mountains to frying bacon on an Oklahoma sidewalk.
If forecasts hold, more records could fall in the coming days in the central and western parts of the U.S.
University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver says the current heat wave "is bad now by our current definition," but that this will be "far more common in the years ahead."
No matter where you are this week, the objective is the same: stay cool.
