The National Weather Service issues its first-ever “firenado” warning in conjunction with a wildfire east of California’s Sierra Nevada. 

Death Valley records a temperature of 130°F, which may be the hottest temperature ever recorded. 

More than 10,000 lightning strikes spark fires across California, including one that destroys the headquarters and campgrounds at Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California’s oldest state park. The fate of the park’s ancient redwood trees is not yet known.

Climate-change-stoked forest fires in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant are releasing large amounts of radiation. 

Nearly 175,000 people in the United States have died of COVID-19. Americans are dying at six times the rate of people in other rich countries. 

In the Swiss town of Olten, it is snowing chocolate. 

On August 16, an undetected car-size asteroid came within 1,830 miles of Earth. 

The Interior Department says that it will auction leases to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before the end of the year.  

A bald eagle disables a government drone, sinking it to the bottom of Lake Michigan.  

The Democratic National Committee drops language from the party’s platform calling for an end to tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels. 

The Republican National Committee wants to stage a fireworks display at the Washington Monument after Trump accepts the GOP’s nomination. 

Washington State’s Department of Fish and Wildlife exterminates the Wedge wolf pack, which had been preying on cattle grazing on public lands in Stevens County.  

After more than a century, wolverines return to Mt. Rainier. 

An all-white orca is spotted off Southeast Alaska. 

Trump withdraws his nomination of anti–public lands activist William Perry Pendley to be head of the Bureau of Land Management. Pendley, who has been serving as acting head of the agency, signs an order allowing himself to continue in his acting capacity.  

Former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor says that Trump wanted to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland.  

Greenland’s ice sheet lost a million tons of ice per minute in 2019. The ice sheet, the world’s second largest after Antarctica, has now passed the point of no return.