 risk for damaging wind gusts that can bring down trees and power lines, as well as some hail and even flash flooding from western parts of the Oklahoma Panhandle northward through eastern Colorado and western Kansas, extending as far to the north as southern North Dakota and even a sliver of far southeastern Montana. By contrast, extreme and at times record challenging heat rolls on for a large portion of the western U.S., with the heat even intensifying further from Saturday into Monday for the northwest, where highs can reach 10 to 20 degrees above historical averages from eastern