(Reno) The first heat wave of the year is expected to maintain its grip on the U.S. Southwest for at least another day Friday, after records were broken across the region with temperatures topping 43 degrees Celsius from California to Arizona.
Although the official start of summer is only two weeks away, about half of Arizona and Nevada were under an excessive heat alert, which the National Weather Service extended until Friday evening. The alert was extended until Saturday in Las Vegas, where it has never been so hot at the start of the year.
The National Weather Service in Phoenix, where Thursday’s new record high of 45 degrees Celsius surpassed the old record of 44 degrees set in 2016, called conditions “dangerously hot.”
There were no immediate reports of heat-related deaths or serious injuries.
But at a campaign rally for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in Phoenix, eleven people suffered from heat exhaustion late in the afternoon and were taken to the hospital, where they were treated before being discharged, firefighters said.
In Las Vegas, with a new record high of 43.8°C, the Clark County Fire Department said it had responded to at least twelve calls for heat exposure since midnight Wednesday. Nine of these calls required the hospitalization of a patient.
Several other areas in Arizona, California and Nevada also broke records by one or two degrees, including Death Valley National Park which recorded a record temperature of 50 degrees, topping 49 .4°C recorded in 1996 in this desert located 59 meters below sea level, near the California-Nevada border. The data goes back to 1911.
The heat arrived weeks earlier than usual, even in places farther north, at higher elevations — areas that are typically several degrees cooler. That’s the case in Reno, where the normal temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit for this time of year hit a record high of 99 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday. The record goes back to 1888.
The National Weather Service is forecasting a slight cooling across the region this weekend, but only by a few degrees. In central and southern Arizona, this will still mean high temperatures of up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
