A huge swath of the United States will experience dangerously high temperatures on Wednesday (July 3) - just ahead of the long Fourth of July weekend - meteorologists said, while a fast-moving California wildfire has forced thousands of residents to evacuate their homes.

Some 110 million people in 21 states across the West, the southern Plains and the Mid-Atlantic will spend their holiday under heat-related advisories and warnings. Temperatures were expected to soar well past 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the next several days, the National Weather Service said.

"It's really hot; I don't know how else to put it," said Jacob Asherman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. "We're having excessively hot weather across a lot of the country."

The scorching weather sets in just as the country begins the Independence Day weekend, a holiday when many Americans head to the outdoors for firework displays, parades, music festivals and the like.

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