just driving in to the cnn headquarters this morning, you could see the thick haze of smoke in the street lamps. the sun hasn t even risen here and i know that it will already being a smoky day in atlanta. there is an air quality alert code aorange for the city of atlanta. you can see the quality of air not that kuwait. moderate to sensitive groups impacted by this. and only good news is that cold front is coming and this will help to clear out the air as we head into wednesday and thursday. kind of redistributes it temporarily before the front sweeps it eastward. and this is the other avenue we re focusing on, the potential for flooding. not only more rain for the flood prone areas across new england, but also across central portions of tennessee and into western kentucky where we have a level of three of four excessive rainfall risk that could lead to flash flooding.
phoenix expected to break this 18 day record-setting heat streak today. when will it end? they will continue to set record after record every day for the next week. you can see that the record is 18 consecutive days of temperatures above 110. and here is today s forecast. look at tomorrow and so on. if you are looking for relief, well, next week monday only 114. yeah, you can cut the knife with the sarcasm in this room. or you can cut the sarcasm with a knife, that is what i meant to say. but this is an incredible heat dome, right, that is causing this trapped amount of heat over the southwestern u.s. similar temperatures from phoenix to las vegas. look at that, 113 for the afternoon. and there is the 65 million americans under excessive heat al alerts. but also the other problem that we have are smoke alerts across much of the northeast including atlanta.
signs of ending anytime soon. rafael romo has more. reporter: 116 degrees in las vegas, 118 in phoenix, arizona. and in one of the hottest places on the planet, death valley, california, they have hit a staggering 128 degrees. tomorrow we ll be around 129 degrees, maybe even pushing into 130. reporter: around 80 million americans are now facing heat alerts. and heat records are now being shattered across the western u.s. and throughout the south including texas. in el paso the thermometer has risen past 100 for 32 days. the state is avoiding outages thanks to wind and solar energy. but in atlanta they passed 110 degrees. and these warnings for much above normal temperatures have been out for days and some places for weeks.