Alaska's recent heat wave has been grabbing headlines, and rightly so: The state has been hotter than parts of the contiguous U.S. during June and July.
Driving the news: Anchorage hit 90°F for the first time ever, and the heat plus summer thunderstorms have triggered massive wildfires across the state. An area greater than Rhode Island has burned in just the past 11 days.
A developing storm in the north-central Gulf of Mexico, which is expected to become a hurricane by Saturday, threatens to unleash one of the worst flood events in New Orleans' history this weekend.
The big picture: Because the storm, to be named Barry, is lumbering off the coast, it's pulling copious amounts of moisture from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and is poised to direct it like a firehose at Louisiana and Mississippi. The Mississippi River is already so high in the New Orleans area that heavy rain plus a storm surge could overtop the cities' river levees for the first time, flooding large parts of the city.
