Canada experienced the highest-ever temperature, in an unprecedented heatwave that has over a week killed hundreds of people and triggered more than 150 wildfires across British Columbia, most of which are still burning.

Iran PressAmerica: Lytton hit 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.3 degrees Fahrenheit), astounding for the town of just 250 people nestled in the mountains, where June's maximum temperatures are usually around 25 degrees. This past week, however, its nights have been hotter than its days usually are, in a region where air conditioning is rare and homes are designed to retain heat.

Smoke rises from a fire at Long Loch and Derrickson Lake in Central Okanagan in Canada on June 30.

Now fires have turned much of Lytton to ash and forced its people, as well as hundreds around them to flee.

Scientists have warned for decades that climate change will make heat waves more frequent and more intense. That is a reality now playing out in Canada, but also in many other parts of the northern hemisphere that are increasingly becoming uninhabitable.

Roads melted this week in America's Northwest and residents in New York City were told not to use high-energy appliances, like washers and dryers — and painfully, even their air conditioners — for the sake of the power grid.

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