On a recent sunny afternoon in Lancaster, Cassandra Hughes looked for a place to cool down. She set up a lawn chair in the shade at the edge of a park and spent the afternoon with a coloring book, listening to hip-hop music.
Reaching a high of 97 degrees, this August day was pleasant by Lancaster standards — a breeze offered temporary relief. But just the week before, during a brutal heat wave, the high hit 109. For Hughes, the Mojave Desert city has been a dramatic change from the mild weather in El Segundo, the coastal city where she lived before moving in April.
Hughes, a retired nurse, is among the Californians who are moving inland in search of affordable housing and more space. But it comes at a price: dangerous heat driven by climate change, accompanied by sky-high electric bills.
A CalMatters analysis shows that many California cities with the biggest recent population booms are the same places that will experience the most high heat days — a potentially deadly confluence. The combination of a growing population and rising extreme heat will put more people at risk of illnesses and pose a challenge for unprepared local officials.
As greenhouse gasses warm the planet, more people around the globe are experiencing intensifying heat waves and higher temperatures. An international panel of climate scientists recently reported that it is “virtually certain” that “there has been increases in the intensity and duration of heatwaves and in the number of heatwave days at the global scale.”
CalMatters identified the California communities most at risk — the top 1% of the state’s more than 8,000 census tracts that have grown by more than…
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