(PCM) Most of the time when there is a heat wave in a particular region, meteorologists will use various colors of yellow, orange and red to spotlight those particular areas on their weather maps. You will usually see these regions shaded in those colors, however what happens when it gets so hot that the meteorologists run out of color shades to describe the heat? This the probably they are facing in Arizona where temperatures have reached an all-time high of 118 degrees and the meteorologist have completely run out of colors to showcase just how hot it is going to get as the temperatures continue to climb.
The meteorologists have now resorted to using other colors such as purple and green to show areas that are in the heat zone, as they have never really had to deal with this problem in the past. The ever-rising temperatures are throwing off the entire weather map color palette. There is not set color scheme that must be used on standard weather maps, however most of the time the obvious choice of color to spotlight heat are reds and oranges, however in some cases you can see brown in there as well. Eventually, you run out of shades of red or orange and must resort to trying something different, so that explains how green and purple got thrown into the mix.
Thus far the temperatures in Arizona have been so hot that they are causing wall to melt and kept some planes from being able to fly. Some residents are even making jokes about the scorching temperatures by placing baking sheets on their vehicles showing that it is hot enough to literally cook food outside of the oven. Scary stuff!