If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here’s what’s in store:

The lake’s flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.

The combined threats of drought conditions, extreme heat, and wildfires led a group of scientists to slap a new label on this summer: "danger season."

The name was coined by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental research and advocacy group, in a blog post published earlier this week.

Temperatures are soaring as we head into the weekend beneath an intense and sprawling heat dome that will bring triple-digit heat to 45 million Americans in the coming week. Heat advisories and excessive heat watches and warnings blanket the map in the Desert Southwest and California, with the heat set to expand into the central United States this weekend.

A "dangerous and deadly heat wave" is on the way for the Southwest through the weekend, the Phoenix National Weather Service warns.

More than 30 million people are under heat alerts, and more than 50 daily high-temperature records could be broken through the weekend -- including in Death Valley, California, one of the hottest places on earth.

"Don't underestimate the heat! Heat is one of the most deadly weather hazards, so be sure to practice heat safety this week," the Sacramento National Weather Service tweeted.

No mother should have to lose her child. Owliyo Hassan Salaad has watched four die this year. A drought in the Horn of Africa has taken them, one by one.

Now she cradles her frail and squalling 3-year-old, Ali Osman, whom she carried on a 90-kilometer (55-mile) walk from her village to Somalia’s capital, desperate not to lose him too. Sitting on the floor of a malnutrition treatment center filled with anxious mothers, she can barely speak about the small bodies buried back home in soil too dry for planting.

In the rolling hills around San Diego and its suburbs, the rumble of bulldozers and the whine of power saws fill the air as a slew of new homes and apartments rise up. The region is booming, its population growing at a rate of about 1 percent a year.

Jamie Traynham has spent nearly half a century in and around the lush Northern California valley, about 70 miles north of Sacramento, that is home to her family’s ranch.

As a girl, she and her sister rode their horses through Sites Valley, and helped build the barn stalls where they raised livestock to show in local 4-H competitions. As an adult, Traynham and her husband rent the ranch from her mother and use the land — typically a sea of green in the rainy season — as a key winter-feeding location for their cattle.

The largest active wildfire in the US has forced thousands from their homes in New Mexico, as unusually fast-spreading blazes dot the drought-stricken south-west.

Southern California’s gigantic water supplier has taken the unprecedented step of requiring about 6 million people to cut their outdoor watering to one day a week as an extended drought plagues the state following another dry winter.

The board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California on Tuesday declared a water shortage emergency and is requiring certain cities and water agencies it supplies to implement the cutback on June 1 and enforce it or face hefty fines.

The historically severe drought in Southern California has compelled one of its water suppliers to implement “emergency” conservation measures for the first time that will affect about 6 million people.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) declared the water shortage emergency Tuesday and ordered limits to “reduce nonessential water use” to parts of Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties. The move includes the unprecedented measure of restricting outdoor watering to one day a week for about a third of their region.