Heat wave scorching Europe and Canada

Athens, July 3 (RHC)-- In Greece, authorities have closed the Acropolis to tourists as a scorching heat wave brought temperatures of up to 110 degrees. 

In Russia, a Siberian village known as the coldest inhabited place on Earth is baking in record heat, with a high temperature of 89 degrees Fahrenheit.  Siberia’s heat wave is rapidly melting permafrost, releasing huge stores of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Canada continues to bake under a heat dome that’s shattered all-time temperature records, with heat warnings in effect all the way from British Columbia to Ontario.  

Between Wednesday and Thursday, meteorologists logged an unprecedented 700,000 lightning events in western Canada, driven by pyrocumulonimbus clouds from wildfires.  The lightning strikes, in turn, sparked new blazes.  They followed Canada’s all-time record high of 121 degrees Fahrenheit, set in the town of Lytton on Tuesday.  The town was almost completely destroyed on Wednesday by a wildfire.