The Crew of the next SpaceX private astronaut flight called Polaris Dawn, (Left to Right) Anna Menon, who works to develop astronaut operations for SpaceX, Scott Poteet, who served as the mission director of the Inspiration4 mission SpaceX, Jared Isaacman, who is financing the mission and Sarah Gillis, lead space operations engineer, SpaceX. Photo by Jonathan Newton/The Washington
(MERRITT ISLAND, Fla.) — Embarking on a new chapter of private space exploration, the Polaris Dawn mission is poised to make history this week by launching four private citizens into ultra-high orbit and attempting the first civilian spacewalk.
Led by billionaire Jared Isaacman and in collaboration with SpaceX, the crew aims to reach as far as 870 miles above Earth, the highest altitude of any human spaceflight mission in more than a half-century since the Apollo program.
SpaceX announced Sunday the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Polaris Dawn crew to orbit could launch as early as Tuesday at 3:38 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Isaacman, the CEO of the payment-processing company Shift4, will be joined by former Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.
During the historic mission, which is set to span five days under normal conditions, two of the crew members will exit the spacecraft in the first commercial spacewalk at an altitude of 435 miles above Earth.
During a press briefing last week, Isaacman shared details on the ambitious mission, which will see all four crew members exposed to the vacuum of space due to the absence of an airlock on the SpaceX Dragon capsule.
The spacewalk will also serve as a critical test for SpaceX’s new Extravehicular Activity spacesuits, an evolution of the intravehicular activity suit.
This new design includes a heads-up display, helmet camera and enhanced joint mobility. It also features thermal insulation, solar protection and a suspension system that allows you to pressurize the suit, put on a harness and actually go through operations as if you are weightless.
The Dragon spacecraft has undergone significant modifications, including upgrades to the life support systems to supply more oxygen during spacewalks, according to the Polaris Program. Environmental sensing has been improved, and a new nitrogen repressurization system has been installed.
The Polaris Dawn mission will be Isaacman’s second journey to space.
In 2021, he funded his first mission to orbit Earth. The project was billed as a childhood cancer fundraiser, garnering $250 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and marked the first all-civilian mission to orbit.
Looking to the future, Isaacman believes the SpaceX vehicles could unlock a new frontier in commercial space travel.
“It could very well be the 737 for human space flight someday,” he said of the company’s Starship vehicle. “But it’ll certainly be the vehicle that will return humans to the moon and then on to Mars and beyond,” he added.
(KETCHIKAN, Alaska) — A landslide in Ketchikan, Alaska, blocked roads and damaged houses, killing at least one person, officials said.
Three other people were transported to a nearby hospital, Kacie Paxton, a public information officer for the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, said in a statement. One of those people was later released, she said.
Forced mandatory evacuations were put in place after the landslide swept through several streets in Ketchikan at about 4 p.m. on Sunday, Paxton said. Alaska State Troopers and local authorities were undertaking search and rescue operations.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued an Alaska Disaster Emergency Declaration. A separate Joint Disaster Emergency Declaration was issued by Borough Mayor Rodney Dial and City of Ketchikan Mayor Dave Kiffer.
“In my 65 years in Ketchikan, I have never seen a slide of this magnitude,” Kiffer said in a statement. “With the slides we have seen across the region, there is clearly a region-wide issue that we need to try to understand with the support of our state geologist.”
He added, “The loss of life that we have encountered is heartbreaking, and my heart goes out to those who lost their homes.”
An evacuation was ordered for homes near the landslide, along Third Avenue, Second Avenue and Water Street, First Avenue, and White Cliff Avenue between Austin Street and Nadeau Street, officials said.
Photos released by the borough appeared to show a pile of trees and loose soil up against several hillside homes, at least one of which appeared to have been pushed into another home. Other photos appeared to show roads covered with debris, including trees.
“Our prayers are with the families, the injured, those recovering, and the community,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said on social media, later adding, “My team and I stand ready to help facilitate any federal assistance that may be necessary.”
(FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.) — The body of a 33-year-old woman who was swept away in flash flooding at the Grand Canyon has been discovered, according to the National Park Service.
Chenoa Nickerson of Gilbert, Arizona, had been missing since Thursday afternoon when heavy rain triggered a flash flood that washed her into Havasu Creek in the Grand Canyon, about a half mile from where the creek meets the Colorado River, according to the NPS.
Nickerson’s body was discovered at approximately 11:30 a.m. Sunday by a commercial river trip near river mile 176 in the Colorado River, the park service said in a press release.
Park rangers responded and recovered the body, which was transported to the rim of the canyon by helicopter and transferred to the Coconino County medical examiner.
An investigation into the incident is being conducted by the medical examiner and the NPS, according to the release.
At the time she disappeared, Nickerson was not wearing a life jacket, officials said.
Earlier Sunday, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs activated the National Guard to help in the emergency rescue operations.
The search for Nickerson — described as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, 190 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes — was focused in the Beaver Falls area of the Grand Canyon, the National Park Service said, adding that rescue crews were searching by ground, air and boat. Nickerson was last seen wearing a black tank top, black shorts and blue hiking boots.
The National Park Service said Nickerson had been staying at a campground near the village of Supai on the Havasupai Reservations at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
“We love her very much and are not giving up on her,” Nickerson’s family previously said in a statement to ABC News.
Nickerson was hiking at the time torrential rains hit and washed her into Havasu Creek, officials said.
The National Weather Service said the area received between 1 to 2 inches of rain within 60 to 90 minutes.
Other tourists camping and hiking in the area became trapped by the floodwaters, emergency officials said. The flooding also prompted rescues of residents at the Havasupai Indian Reservation in the Havasu Canyon area of the Grand Canyon.
The Havasupai Tribal Council said in a statement Saturday that all trails leading into and out of the small village of Supai in the Grand Canyon were made unpassable by the storm. The area is a popular tourist destination for its blue-green waterfalls, including Havasu Falls, which features a 100-foot vertical drop.
The Tribal Council said a campground near Supai sustained extensive damage from the flooding and had to be evacuated and closed.
“The Tribal Council’s focus is the health and safety of the tribal members and those that provide services in Supai,” according to the council’s statement.
“My heart is with all of the people impacted by the flooding in Havasupai, including tribal members and visitors to the area,” Hobbs said in a statement. “I am closely monitoring the situation and we have deployed the Arizona National Guard to get people to safety. The safety and security of Arizonans and all those who visit our state is always my top concern, and I’ll continue working closely with leaders on the ground to protect the Havasupai community.”
National Guard officials said it used helicopters to evacuate 104 tourists and residents of the Havasupai Indian Reservation from flooded areas by Saturday afternoon.
Supai resident Rochelle Tilousi told ABC News that at one point she was cut off from her children by the rushing flood waters.
“We could see the children running trying to beat the flood, but they couldn’t,” Tilousi said, adding that the children survived the flooding and are now safe.
She said her family’s pets were washed away by the flood.
“There is part of our village that is still flooded,” Tilousi said Saturday.
Editor’s Note: Chenoa Nickerson was not wearing a life jacket when she was swept away by floodwaters. This story has been updated to reflect that information.
ABC News’ Vanessa Navarrete contributed to this report.
(PATERSON, N.J.) — As the search continued Sunday for a relative accused of stabbing a 4-year-old girl multiple times at the child’s New Jersey home, the father of the young victim said she’s fighting for her life and the attack left him “dumbfounded.”
The child remains in stable condition at Saint Joseph’s University Medical Center, where she is being treated for puncture wounds to her lung and liver and an injured diaphragm, according to her family.
“She couldn’t respond because she had tubes and everything down her, but she opened her eyes and when she heard my voice she started making eye contact trying to see me. That brought joy to me that she was responsive,” the girl’s father, Faherem LaSane, told ABC New York station WABC outside the hospital on Saturday afternoon.
LaShane said his daughter’s name is Amber, and described her as a happy girl with a big smile and an appetite to match.
The stabbing unfolded just after 4 p.m. on Friday in Paterson, New Jersey, according to the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office. Officers were called to the home for a domestic dispute and found the child stabbed multiple times, prosecutors said.
Police did not immediately identify the suspect, but Paterson council member Luis Velez told WABC that police are looking for the child’s aunt in connection with the incident.
The aunt was babysitting Amber while the girl’s mother was at the home caring for another child, relatives said.
Neighbor Keema James said she saw the mother emerge from the home holding the child, both covered in blood.
“She had a big gash on her forehead and she had her wrapped up,” James said of the victim in an interview with WABC.
LaShan said he was stunned when he received word of the stabbing and immediately rushed to the hospital to be at his daughter’s side.
“I was totally dumbfounded, and I was shocked because I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe it at all,” LaShan said.
A motive for the stabbing remains under investigation.
The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office asked anyone with information about the incident to contact its office.
Hurricane Hone was moving late Saturday south of the Big Island of Hawaii as a weak Category 1 storm, with winds of 75 mph.
The storm was expected to remain at about the same status, walking the tight line between tropical storm and hurricane on Sunday and into Monday. Hurricanes have winds of 74 mph or greater.
Hone is moving westerly at 12 mph and is currently 105 miles south of Hilo, Hawaii, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Hurricane force winds were only extending about 15 miles from the eye of the storm, meaning the Big Island is only experiencing tropical storm conditions, and is only expected to. Tropical storm force winds were extending up to 125 miles.
A Tropical Storm Warning had been issued as Hone approached Hawaii. That warning remained in effect for Hawaii County at about 11 p.m. on Saturday, weather officials said.
While the storm isn’t expected to make a direct hit on the islands, it is still close enough to deliver some potentially dangerous impacts. Tropical Storm conditions are likely occurring on the Big Island overnight and early Sunday, especially at higher terrains and through passes.
About 6 to 12 inches of rainfall are expected on the Big Island — especially near the windward and southeast-facing slopes — and there is a Flash Flood Watch there. For the smaller islands, about 2 to 4 inches of rain are expected.
Life-threatening surf and rip currents are also impacting Hawaii.
(NEW YORK) — Hawaii is on alert for Tropical Storm Hone while extreme heat is expected to expand from the South to the Midwest, leaving 25 million Americans under heat alerts this weekend.
A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the Big Island of Hawaii as Tropical Storm Hone passes by to the south of the islands.
While it won’t be a direct hit, the storm is still close enough to deliver some potentially dangerous impacts.
The main threat is for heavy rain that could cause flash flooding and landslides, especially on the eastern side of the Big Island where rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches are possible. For the smaller islands, scattered rainfall of 2 to 4 inches is possible this weekend from Hone’s outer bands.
In terms of wind, tropical storm force winds are forecast to begin this evening and throughout the overnight hours into Sunday morning. Gusts will generally be in the 25 to 40 mph range, but there could be some gusts of over 50 mph in some of the higher elevations on the Big Island.
Swells from Hone will also generate high surf and dangerous rip currents for all the islands beginning in the Big Island on Saturday and spreading west to the rest of the islands over the weekend.
Hone may reach hurricane status for a short period of time as it passes south of Hawaii, but it is forecast to stay over open water and eventually weaken back into a Tropical Storm.
Heat alerts for 25 million Americans
This weekend, sweltering heat continues for much of the southern plains, but it will ease up a bit in Texas as the weekend goes on.
The extreme heat drifts north over the next few days, heading through the central plains and into the upper Midwest.
An excessive heat watch is in effect for parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, including Minneapolis on Sunday and Monday.
The heat index could be approaching 110 degrees for several cities in the plains and Midwest on Sunday and Monday.
Extreme heat slides eastward for the beginning to the middle of next week, moving into the Great Lakes and into the south by Tuesday and Wednesday.
Cities like Chicago, Louisville, and Atlanta could be approaching some record high temperatures up to 95 to 100 degrees for the middle of the upcoming week.
(NEW YORK) — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was hospitalized with a case of West Nile virus and is now recovering at home, a spokesperson said.
Fauci is expected to make a full recovery, the spokesperson told ABC News in a statement.
West Nile virus is the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental United States, according to the CDC.
Mosquitoes typically become infected with the virus after feeding on infected birds and then spread it to humans and other animals, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases typically begin rising in July and are highest in August and September, CDC data shows.
Several health departments in the U.S. say they have detected West Nile virus in mosquito samples this year. At least 216 cases of West Nile virus have been detected in 33 states, the CDC reports in it’s latest figures.
The majority of people with the virus do not have symptoms, but about one in five will experience fever along with headaches, body aches, joint pain, diarrhea, vomiting or a rash. Most symptoms disappear but weakness and fatigue may last for weeks or months.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
(BUTLER, Penn.) — At least five U.S. Secret Service officials involved in the planning of Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, where a gunman attempted to kill the former president, have been placed on administrative leave, according to two sources familiar with the situation.
The officials are still working but not allowed to be involved in anything operational including the security planning, the sources told ABC News.
The Secret Service’s Office of Professional Responsibility investigation has been intensifying, and while the investigation has focused on the failures, miscues and planning up to Butler, the probe is now focusing on a number of issues, including the number of classified threats against former President Trump by Iran and what the agency did in response security-wise regarding the new intelligence.
An official tells ABC News this means even more senior officials might be caught up in the review.
“The U.S. Secret Service is committed to investigating the decisions and actions of personnel related to the event in Butler, Pennsylvania and the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump,” the agency said. “The U.S. Secret Service’s mission assurance review is progressing, and we are examining the processes, procedures and factors that led to this operational failure.”
The agency said it holds its personnel to the “highest professional standards” and would not comment further.
Trump was struck in his ear by a bullet during the assassination attempt at his campaign rally on July 13, which also killed one spectator and injured two others, according to officials. The gunman, identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by Secret Service agents.
The U.S. Secret Service recently made arrangements for Trump to resume outdoor campaign rallies by surrounding his podium with bulletproof glass, multiple sources told ABC News.
Joe and Sarah Emerson speak with ABC News. — Sam Sweeney/ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Joseph Emerson, a former Alaska Airlines pilot, calls it the biggest mistake of his life.
Emerson was inside an Alaska Airlines cockpit last October when he raised his arms and pulled two large red levers that could have shut down both engines, at 30,000 feet. He calls the incident the worst 30 seconds of his life.
Ten months later, he is now grateful for those moments: They’ve saved his marriage, allowed him more time with his kids, and thrust him into a life of therapy, recovery, and the launch of a new non-profit designed to help other pilots struggling with mental illness.
Now Emerson and his wife, Sarah, are describing that incident, and the anxious, challenging months that followed, in an interview with ABC News.
“I made a big mistake.”
Emerson sent his wife Sarah a text message on Oct. 22, 2023, moments after he was removed from that cockpit and just before he asked a flight attendant to handcuff him.
“I made a big mistake,” the message read.
Sarah Emerson replied: “What’s up? Are you ok?”
“I’m not,” Joe Emerson replied.
That was the last time Sarah Emerson heard from her husband for days. She immediately tracked his flight and learned it had diverted and made an emergency landing in Portland.
Sarah knew little of what happened for 24 hours. It wasn’t until a jail receptionist told her that she learned her husband had been charged with 83 counts of attempted murder – one count for every soul on the aircraft.
“I walk up to the window and say I’m looking for my husband and he kind of just looked on the computer and typed some things in and then nonchalantly tells me the charges, and I lost it,” Sarah Emerson told ABC News. “I screamed and I keeled over, and I almost fell. They grabbed me and pulled me over because I know what that means. I was in a complete shock.”
What happened
Joe Emerson had been struggling over the death of his best friend, Scott, a pilot who died while on a run six years earlier. Emerson had been away for the weekend with friends, celebrating and remembering Scott.
On Friday night, the group took psychedelic mushrooms – a drug that can make you hallucinate and typically has effects that last a few hours. Emerson said that for him, the physical side effects lasted days, and the consequences a lifetime. Joe and Sarah Emerson speak with ABC News.
Something wasn’t right
As a friend drove him to the airport, Emerson said all he could think about was being home with his family, but a deepening fear that he would never make it began to overtake him. It intensified as he took his jump seat inside the confined cockpit of the Alaska Airlines jet.
“There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?'” Emerson told ABC News, in an interview near his home in California.
Emerson said the feeling increased – and with it, a belief that ” this isn’t real, I’m not actually going home … until I became completely convinced that none of this was real,” Emerson said.
As the Alaska Airlines plane headed toward San Francisco, Emerson said his conditioned worsened. He reached out to a friend who texted Emerson to do breathing exercises. Instead of helping, Emerson said, the moment when his phone read the text in his ear ultimately pushed him over the edge.
“That’s kind of where I flung off my headset, and I was fully convinced this isn’t real and I’m not going home,” Emerson recalled. “And then, as the pilots didn’t react to my completely abnormal behavior in a way that I thought would be consistent with reality, that is when I was like, this isn’t real. I need to wake up.”
The next 30 seconds would put 83 other lives in danger, end Joe’s career, and potentially send him to prison for the rest of his life.
“It’s 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t.”
“There are two red handles in front of my face,” Emerson recalled. “And thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality, I reached up and I grabbed them, and I pulled the levers.”
Those levers were the engine shut-off controls.
“What I thought is, ‘This is going to wake me up,'” Emerson said. “I know what those levers do in a real airplane and I need to wake up from this. You know, it’s 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t.”
How did the pilots respond?
Emerson said as soon as he grabbed the engine shut-off levers, the pilots pulled his hands away. He remembers the pilots’ immediate confusion, trying to comprehend what just happened. Emerson also recalled what made him quickly realize his situation was very much real.
“It was really the pilot’s physical touch on my hand,” Emerson said. “Both pilots grabbed my hands where I kind of stopped and I had that moment, which I’ll just say I view this moment as a gift.”
Two gifts, Emerson said. The second was that the engines did not shut down but continued to operate normally.
“I observe the pilots react to the difficult situation that I just handed them and watch them react in a very professional manner,” Emerson said of the pilots. “I heard them converse about me and I said, ‘You guys want me out of the flight deck?'”
The pilots unlocked the cabin door for him, and he “opened the door to a very confused flight attendant,” Emerson recalled.
Emerson said he walked into the cabin, drank directly from a coffee pot and took a seat in the flight attendants’ jump seat. None of the passengers knew that the man in a pilot’s uniform had only moments earlier tried to turn off their plane’s engines. An Alaska Airlines takes off from Anchorage Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska, July 2, 2024.
Emerson’s episode wasn’t over
Emerson’s feeling of unreality persisted, he said, and he again felt the need to wake up.
“At some point I thought maybe this isn’t real, and maybe I can wake myself up by just jumping out, like that freefall feeling that you have,” he said.
So Emerson grabbed another lever – this one operating the cabin door.
“I put my hand on the lever, I didn’t operate the lever,” he recalled, at which point a flight attendant stopped him.
“She put … her hand on mine again and with that human touch, I released. I think around that period is when I said, ‘I don’t understand what’s real, I don’t I don’t understand what’s real.'”
At that point, Emerson said he asked the flight attendant to handcuff him, and she immediately did so.
“I essentially asked to be restrained myself because I knew if this is real, I’ve already done enough damage,” Emerson said. “I thought, ‘Let’s restrain me till I can get the help I need.’ That’s really kind of what I was hoping coming off this airplane that I would get, get the help I needed.”
Emerson was taken into custody when the plane landed in Portland. Sarah Emerson wouldn’t learn what happened on board until late the next day. She wondered whether her husband had experienced a medical emergency and was in a hospital. She tracked his phone and saw it pinged from the airport.
“I could see that his phone was at the airport. We knew the plane was diverted and so I was wondering, ‘Okay, is he hurt? Is he sick? What happened?'” Sarah Emerson said.
It was several hours before Emerson’s union representative informed Sarah Emerson that her husband was being detained.
“I said, ‘What does that mean?’ It’s just so not the world that I live in, you know. I just didn’t even understand what that meant,” Sarah Emerson recalled.
Jail, and a way forward
Emerson spent the next 45 days in jail before he was granted bond. It wasn’t until Tuesday evening, four days after taking the mushrooms, that Emerson said he regained full clarity.
His jail physician would later tell him that he suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which can cause someone who uses psychedelic mushrooms for the first time to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward.
Emerson also now believes that he’s an alcoholic, although he said alcohol didn’t play a role in October’s incident.
“My substance that I used was primarily alcohol, which is a depressant, to treat a depressive state,” Emerson said, adding that he’s now in treatment and prioritizing his mental health. He also said he accepts full responsibility for his actions – actions that he said have actually changed his life for the better.
Joe and Sarah Emerson are now dedicating much of their life to building their new nonprofit: Clear Skies Ahead. Their goal is to raise funds for and awareness of pilot mental health, and to emphasize the importance of not being afraid to seek help.
Because pilots who don’t meet strict medical requirements can have their license to fly revoked, Emerson said, it’s not unheard of for pilots to refuse to admit or seek help for mental health issues.
“Right now, if you raise your hand, not in every case, but there’s a perception out there that if you raise your hand and say something’s not right, there’s a very real possibility that you don’t fly again,” Emerson said.
Following Emerson’s incident, pilot mental health is receiving renewed attention.
“Who would you rather fly with: a pilot who is depressed, or a pilot who is depressed on medication?” said Dr. Brent Blue, an Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) senior aviation medical examiner, at a National Transportation Safety Board mental health summit in December.
“And that’s what it comes down to. We need to work together to help modernize the system and help the FAA modernize our pilot mental health evaluation program,” Blue added.
In May, the FAA the expanded the number of drugs approved for use by pilots, including several antidepressants. The agency also says it is hiring more mental health professionals.
“The FAA encourages pilots to seek help if they have a mental-health condition since most, if treated, do not disqualify someone from flying,” the FAA said in a statement to ABC News, in part. “In fact, only about 0.1% of medical certificate applicants who disclose health issues are denied. Treating these conditions early is important, and that is why the FAA has approved more antidepressants for use by pilots and air traffic controllers.”
Joe Emerson’s future
Emerson remains in legal limbo. Though he’s no longer facing attempted murder charges, he is still facing more than 80 state and federal charges, including 83 counts of reckless endangerment after prosecutors reduced the charges in December. It’s possible prosecutors could offer a plea deal or decide to go to trial later this fall.
“At the end of the day, I accept responsibility for the choices that I made. They’re my choices,” Emerson told ABC News. “What I hope through the judicial processes is that the entirety of not just 30 seconds of the event, but the entirety of my experience is accounted for as society judges me on what happened. And I will accept what the debt that society says I owe.”
What would he tell the passengers and crew?
What would Emerson tell the 83 passengers and crew onboard that Alaska Airlines flight?
“First and foremost, thank you,” Emerson said. “I appreciate that they saw someone in crisis in the back of that plane and that they paid attention to what the flight crew was telling them to do, and they remained calm until we got on the ground.”
It’s to the crew, however, that Emerson said he owes the biggest debt of gratitude.
“What I did was, something we don’t train for, and they handled it fantastic. It’s really a result of their professionalism and the way they handled that situation that I’m alive today,” Emerson said.
As for whether he’ll ever fly again, Emerson said that remains up in the air – and out of his hands.
“Of course I want to fly again. I’d be totally disingenuous if I said no,” he said. “I don’t know in what capacity I’m going to fly again and I don’t know if that’s an opportunity that’s going to be afforded to me. It’s not up to me to engineer that. What is up to me is to do what’s in front of me, put myself in a position where that’s a possibility, that it can happen.”
“But at the end of the day,” Emerson conceded, “if I’m not meant to fly again, I’m not going to fly again.”
ABC News’ John Capell and Miles Cohen contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Texas has been baking in record heat since the weekend, and the rest of the week will be no exception.
Record highs are expected Thursday from Roswell, New Mexico, to Galveston, Texas, forecasts show. Heat alerts have been issued by the National Weather Service for Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Florida on Thursday.
San Antonio and Austin are expected to break records if they reach the forecast highs of 104 and 103, respectively. Record heat will last in Texas through this weekend but will begin to subside early next week.
More than a dozen record highs were tied or broken in Texas on Wednesday, with more to come in the next several days.
Abilene, Texas, hit an all-time record high temperature of 113 degrees, with records dating back to 1885 for the city. San Antonio hit 108 degrees, the hottest temperature in 11 years, tying for the fourth-hottest temperature on record.
Houston was one of the cities in Texas that hit the hottest day of the year on Tuesday and Wednesday, reaching 102 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service.
Several Texas cities either tied or broke heat records on Tuesday. Del Rio hit 108 degrees and San Antonio reached 106 degrees. Temperatures reached 104 degrees in Borger; 102 degrees in Amarillo and Corpus Christi; and 98 degrees in Galveston.
