Heat wave bears down on western U.S., making for brutal weekend Today could be one of the hottest days ever recorded on Earth, as the western U.S. falls into the grips of a dangerous heat wave.

Climate Central: A brutal and potentially historic heat wave is in store for the West as parts of Nevada, Arizona and California may get dangerously hot temperatures this weekend and into next week. In fact, by the end of the heat wave, we may see a record tied or broken for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

The furnace-like heat is coming courtesy of a “stuck” weather pattern that is setting up across the U.S. and Canada. By early next week, the jet stream — a fast-moving river of air at airliner altitudes that is responsible for steering weather systems — will form the shape of a massive, slithering snake with what meteorologists refer to as a deep “ridge” across the Western states, and an equally deep trough setting up across the Central and Eastern states.

All-time records are likely to be threatened in normally hot places — including Death Valley, Calif., which holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on earth at 134°F … set on July 10, 1913.

Heat waves are one of the most well-understood consequences of man-made global warming, since as global average surface temperatures increase, the probability of extreme heat events increases by a greater amount.

One study, published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences in 2012, found that the odds of extremely hot summers have significantly increased in tandem with global temperatures. Those odds, the study found, were about 1-in-300 during the 1951-1980 time frame, but that had increased to nearly 1-in-10 by 1981-2010.