PHOTOS: Heat wave melts cable sheathing and warps roads in western US and Canada

The ‘heat dome’ that covered western Canada and the northwestern US on Friday has already caused dozens of deaths and set several temperature records. Meanwhile, residents of the affected areas have shared images on social media showing the scale of the disaster.

In particular, the Portland (Oregon, USA) streetcar system showed photos of a cable whose coating melted, presumably from ambient heat. “In case you’re wondering why we are shutting down service during the day, this is what the heat is doing to our power cables,” the company noted.

For his part, Washington State Patrol spokesman Rocky Oliphant published photographs of a highway near the city of Everson that “is deforming and unsafe to travel.” As a result of the deformation, the route was closed, the officer warned.

From across the border, a Vancouver resident (British Columbia, Canada) shared the image of a candle bent by the heat inside her home. “In case anyone is wondering how hot it is in Vancouver right now, a candle in my living room spontaneously melted today,” the netizen wrote.

Another woman, also from Vancouver, put raw cookies under the windshield of her car. According to him, they were baked there perfectly.

In turn, a user from Seattle published a photograph of a supermarket with the refrigerated shelves almost empty and covered with polyethylene. “It is so hot here in Seattle, that our grocery store has covered cold foods or eliminated what cannot be kept cold enough,” he explained later on that the temperature reached 42.2 degrees Celsius that day.

The heat wave, which also covers the Northwest, has caused temperatures to rise 10-15 degrees higher than normal at this time of year. In particular, it made the city of Lytton, in British Columbia, beat for the third day in a row the record for the highest temperature ever observed in Canada. This Tuesday they registered there 49.5 degree centigrade.

Western Canada and the American Northwest aren’t the only regions in the world experiencing unusually high temperatures. The Russian capital Moscow is also experiencing a heat wave, breaking the daily temperature record it had set in 1917 last week.