June 2024 Heat Waves

Overview

June 2024 Heat Waves refers to a series of long-lasting and expansive heat waves across the United States, United Kingdom and India in June 2024 with multiple days of record-breaking high temperatures. The event, similar to other viral weather occurrences like the 2022 European Heatwave, spawned numerous memes about the weather, global warming and climate change, with a prevalent viral topic about the possible June Heat Dome hitting the Northeast and Midwest region of the U.S., causing the hottest stretch of weather in 30 years.

Background

On June 16th, 2024, the United States National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center^[1] reported that a possible record-breaking heat wave is forecast to expand from the Midwest and Great Lakes to the Northeast into the following weeks of June. The tweet (seen below) also detailed that the extreme temperatures could be "the longest experienced in decades for some locations." The post amassed roughly 820 likes and 460 reposts in a day.

Developments

Prior to the U.S. heat wave forecast, a tweet posted on June 13th, 2024, by the news website and X account @DailyMirror^[2] gained virality for alerting that the "UK to be blasted by 48 hour 26C (78F) heatwave." The post (seen below, left) amassed over 134 million views and 29,000 reposts in four days.

On the same day, India also reported a historic heat wave during June, as X user^[3] @extremetemps explained in a tweet (seen below, right) that "the current heat wave is the longest India has ever experienced and it will just get worse." The post received over 590 likes and 390 reposts in four days.

Online Reactions

As the news about the U.K.'s 26 degrees Celcius (78 degrees Fahrenheit) heat wave went viral on X, netizens started to compare the high temperatures expected in the U.S. for the following weeks in June 2024. For example, on June 15th, 2024, X^[4] user @Goodtweet_man posted an image of a sweaty Patrick Star captioned "Brits when it is 78 F out." The post (seen below, left) received roughly 8,300 likes and 290 reposts in two days.

On June 17th, X^[5] user @midwestern_ope compared how Europeans and Midwesterners deal with an 80-degree Fahrenheit temperature. The post (seen below, right) garnered over 3,300 likes and 260 reposts in a few hours.

Search Interest

External References