This Is the Hottest Temperature Ever Recorded in Canada

The village of Lytton in the interior of southern British Columbia sizzled under a new all-time high temperature for Canada on Sunday, reaching 46.1 degrees Celsius, or just under 115 degrees Fahrenheit. The reading by Environment Canada in Lytton surpassed the previous national high of 45 C (113 F), which was set in Saskatchewan in 1937, the AP reports. As the US Pacific Northwest sweltered to the south, a heat warning also was in effect for most of western Canada, and the weather agency said numerous daily temperature records had been broken across British Columbia. Environment Canada expects temperatures to begin cooling Tuesday.

In the coastal city of Vancouver, where the temperature peaked at 31 C (88 F) at midafternoon Sunday, many people headed to the beach, though the crowds appeared smaller than usual in the sweltering heat. Meanwhile, in the US, the National Weather Service used words like "unprecedented" and "abnormal" to describe the historic heat wave hitting the Pacific Northwest, pushing daytime temperatures into the triple digits, disrupting Olympic qualifying events, and breaking all-time high temperature records in places unaccustomed to such extreme heat. Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash., both set heat records Sunday: 112 F at the former, 104 F at the latter, the AP reports.

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