One of the U.S. West's worst-ever September heat waves is bringing a prolonged period of record-shattering temperatures to at least a half-dozen states this week.
The big picture: Numerous monthly and all-time temperature records began to tumble in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in California on Monday. More records are likely to be threatened into the coming weekend.
The rapidly growing Fairview Fire near Hemet, California, killed at least two people and wounded another during the historic heat wave that's engulfing much of the West, per Cal Fire.
By the numbers: The wildfire grew by 500 acres one hour after igniting some 80 miles east of Los Angeles on Monday afternoon, according to Cal Fire. By late Monday, it had grown to 2,000 acres and was 5% contained, the Riverside County Fire Department tweeted.
Thousands of customers were without power in California Monday night due to the intensifying record heat wave that's hitting much of the U.S. West.
By the numbers: Nearly 67,000 Californian customers were without power on Monday night, according to poweroutage.us. Ongoing power outages were affecting over 40,000 Pacific Gas and Electric Company customers across 28 counties, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area's Contra Costa County, per a PG&E update.
California on Monday called a power grid emergency amid a historic heat wave that is pushing the state's grid to its brink — bringing the risk of rotating outages, Bloomberg reports.
Driving the news: "We need 2 to 3 times as much conservation as we've been experiencing to keep the power on with these historic high temperatures and demand," the grid's chief executive, Elliot Mainzer, said Monday.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday called for a 10% reduction in the country's energy usage in an attempt to prevent having to ration energy usage in the upcoming winter months, AP reports.
Driving the news: "The best energy is that which we don’t consume," Macron said Monday at a news conference, adding that potentially forced energy savings are being prepared "in case," per AP.
Two wildfires burning in Northern California's Siskiyou County, near the Oregon border, have destroyed more than 100 homes and affected thousands of people, as a dangerous heat wave roasts the U.S. West.
The latest: Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue said at a Sunday meeting in a school near the fire-ravaged Weed that two people had died in the Mill Fire that tore through the rural Northern California community, per AP.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during an ABC News interview shared Sunday that Russia's occupying forces were using Europe's largest nuclear power plant as a "weapon."
What he's saying: Zelensky said in the interview airing Monday that the threat of Russian forces occupying the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeastern Ukraine and its six reactors was akin to "six Chernobyls" — a reference to the 1986 nuclear disaster in the northern region of Soviet Ukraine.
Georgia's governor declared a state of emergency in two counties as heavy rains lashed the state's northwest, flash flooding that inundated homes and roads on Sunday.
The big picture: The National Weather Service issued flood watches and warnings for parts of Georgia through Monday due to the storm.
