This is quite amazing - Not been given much coverage yet - Some incredible temperatures set in the Pacific North West and Canada.

A new record has been set for Canada with Lytton in British Columbia yesterday recorded 46.6C 117F. Other records include Portland, Oregon with 45C 114F. McMinnville, Oregon hit 43.5C 111F, The Dalles, Oregon with 45.5C 115F. Some of these records and others set yesterday may fall again later today or tomorrow. I'm keeping tabs on this - well interesting.

Big news that Canada has a new all time record high temperature - Lytton's official high temperature today on June 27, 2021 is 46.6 C. Lytton British Columbia now holds the record for Canada's all time maximum high. The previous record was 45.0 C set on July 5, 1937 at Yellow Grass, and Midale, Saskatchewan.

Not sure its a matter of time here. We are a tiny island surrounded on all sides by water.

If the wind is in the right direction in North America, it is directly continental with no temperance from any body of water.

I know they have the Pacific to the west, but north, east and south is land, and lends itself to much easier passage to extreme heat.

I do think 40c is a remote possibility in the UK, but certainly wouldn't say it's just a matter of time.

I think it would need several days or even weeks of direct southerlies to get us to that threshold. Even a short track across a relatively cool English Channel would temper things slightly.

That said, we have got close in recent years, within a degree and a bit, but its very unlikely in my view, although certainly not impossible.

Around kennewick looks more extreme than Portland:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5799610/today

Could be 47C today, even higher potentially tommorow (though cooler in portland).

Maybe, but the air is extremely dry so maybe not.

Sometimes in the US you can get cold fronts that drop the temp by 10C+ without a cloud in the sky.

It's been discussed in the North American reports thread for a few days. Probably worthy of its own thread though 

True, in fact it’s one of the big differences between the Mediterranean and temperate climates of the US West coast and Western Europe that thunderstorms are a major feature of the latter but very rare in the former until you get far inland. The cold sea I think is the culprit. So almost certainly no thundery breakdown.

The US version of XCweather a good place to monitor this as it happens today

https://windmapper.com/NW/observations

15C on the Oregon coast. A true Shetland of the US West. 

I'm currently watching this:

https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KWAKENNE38/table/2021-06-28/2021-06-28/daily

Kennewick has to be close to where the hottest temps will be.

36C already.

Some detail on the various records broken can be found in this link:

https://weather.gc.ca/warnings/weathersummaries_e.html#BC

A highlight from this document is:

Gibsons Area (Sechelt Aut)*

New record of 40.8
Old record of 29.6 set in 2008
Records in this area have been kept since 1949

That's just ridiculous! 

They are very lucky to experience strong heatwave as what summer is all about, warmth, heat, sunshine and dryness.  They got the jackpot because the heatwave occur on the longest day that allow more heating on the surface.  For here we losing a lot of valuable summer days with this northern blocking pattern that been running since mid June just before the longest day occur.

I think few people on this planet would agree with you. 48C is not only physically intolerable but is also life threatening for many people.

Canada weather: Dozens dead as heatwave shatters records

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57654133

"On Tuesday, Canada recorded its highest ever temperature for a third straight day - 49.5C (121F) in Lytton, British Columbia. "

...

"Before this week, temperatures in the country had never passed 45C"

Absolutely astonishing.

Here the data for that location and not yet updated for 49.5 so that 50C for Canada.

Meanwhile from the Death Valley data and note it reached 40C at night.  

I am wondering what the height from the seal levels for Lytton? because if they can managed to reach just close to 50C while Death Valley which sit well below sea levels only reached 52C and 53C the highest for this month.  We cannot even get a 25C in the UK nowadays here and lost chance of 42C at least when France hit 46C due to clouds interruptions that give out only 38.7C.  I remember posters got stress with clouds coming and spoil it.  Also in July 1st 2015 when it reached 33C at 9am only to hit by clouds for few hours during the prime rising temps time.

Really quite incredible readings over in Canada. This is so far outside std deviation as to be utterly freakish. Even with global warming I would expect that record will last many years or decades. 

Meanwhile it's due to be 17C in London today. A bit of sharing wouldn't go amiss: BC could climb down from 49C to a more reasonable 35C, and we could take those 14C and add them to our current temperatures in the South East. 

Lytton is at 225m above sea level so fairly high.

The diurnal variation in temperature has also been very high. Temperatures have fallen to just above 20C on each of the past few nights.

The diurnal variation for 29th June was 28.8C.

The latest overnight reading shows the 09z temperature was still at 29.3C. That is 2.2C above the reading for the same time yesterday.

My view is that this is probably something like a once in a 1000 year event. It will be, probably, the most extreme weather event any of us have ever observed anywhere on the planet during our entire lifetimes. I cannot think of any weather event anywhere that comes close to this on its rarity.

Climate change will have helped by shifting the entire distribtution along a couple of degrees, but even without a background global warming the record would not have been in doubt and it would still be extreme beyond belief.

Think about this. A place in Canada, which did not hold the record before, just broke the record for the entire country, for the entire year, three times in a row. the 49.6C Lynton record is so extreme that Canada has just jumped from being rank 50 to rank 25 in terms of countries ranked by highest recoreded temperature. And that occured in June, not July or August. It is very unusual for a country to have its highest ever recorded temperature in June. Here's a challenge, find some examples that didn't occur during this heatwave. The event was so extreme that I can pretty much guarantee about 90% of all northern hemisphere June temp records happened during this heatwave.

It is simply the most extreme weather event we have or will ever see. More unlikely than Hurricane Patricia in 2015

I agree with this viewpoint. The pattern that has occurred across western North America would have still produced an exceptional heat wave even before the industrial era, but it has been excerbated by climate change. Without any background warming, we may still have seen the Canadian record go, but it may have been a high of 45/46°C, instead of the 49.6°C we have seen.

Indeed. Looks like you could blame maybe 2C of it on climate change. But look how unremarkable the area is for the local effect of Global warming. If this kind of thing was going to happen anywhere you would think Russia or somewhere in the arctic.

The difficulty, I suppose, is acessing the impact of global warming on the likelyhood of this synoptic situation happening. I mean we can't rule out these synoptics actually being less likely due to climate change rather than more likely.

Well considering it was less than 100 years ago when 45C was being recorded in Canada, i don't think this is a once in 1000 year event. Canada is a large country with vast emptiness, and i don't doubt for one minute that similar temperatures have occurred there but simply being missed due to the vastness. 

But the 45C was set during a more appropiate time of year, during more sensible (though unusual) synoptics and was hard fought. The 45C record was unremarkable amongst records if that makes sense. This one is a record of records in many respects.

It would be like getting a bunch of lottery winners together and then finding the lottery winner that won the lottery again.