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| Courtesy: www.nps.gov |
When the high temperature is 120° (48.9°C) or hotter 27 times in a two month period, I don't care what anyone claims about "dry heat" - it is brutally hot!
When the air is a searing 129.2° (54°C) it is kitchen-oven-hot out there. Death Valley heat doesn't feel like the typical sultry Cincinnati summer sauna , as you walk out the door you get smacked by a blast of heat that would make you swear you got your face too close when checking the Thanksgiving turkey.
When it is that hot you do not need an assist from humidity to melt down because you are in the hottest spot on the planet.
Welcome to Death Valley National Park and Reserve, 3 million plus acres of stark reality, a national treasure has the record of the hottest recorded temperature ever on the face of our otherwise, mostly, pleasant planet. On July 10, 1913 the valley was seared by a high air temperature of 134°F (56.7°C), part of a 5-day stretch with high temperatures of 129°F (54°C) or hotter.
If that is not hot enough for you, on July 15, 1972 at Furnace Creek (what a great name!) the temperature of the ground surface reached 201.0°F (93.9°C). That may not be enough heat to liquefy the rubber soles of your shoes but they certainly will get gummy.
The hottest spots on Earth are always deserts. In wetter regions of Earth a great deal of thermal energy is used to evaporate moisture from soils and a rule of thumb meteorologists have is not to predict record high temperatures in summer if soaking rains have fallen the prior week or two.
In addition with scant shading vegetation Earth's surface receives a full frontal assault by an uncountable number of solar photons that can go right to work heating things up because of the lack of moisture in the soil.
If the desert is low, below sea level in much of Death Valley's lowest reaches, it can be even hotter.
Death Valley is dry - very dry. The average annual rainfall is puny. According to the Western Regional Climate Center at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, NV at Cow Creek Station only 2" falls in an average year. The sandy soil is plenty dry for scorching heat each summer.
The average monthly temperature for July 2017 at Furnace Creek Ranch was 107.24°F (41.8°C), likely the hottest ever measured on Earth.
Park Map and Some Superlative Data
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| Created by Steve Horstmeyer using Google Earth. |
A Hot Summer - Temperature Graphs May, June, July 2017
Note: Data was available in whole degrees only, so there will not be complete agreement with the official final data due to rounding. In addition the average daily temperatures are calculated using the formula [Tmax + Tmin]/2 = Avg. A more accurate way is to sum the 24 hourly readings and divide by 24. Hourly data was not available.May 2017 Was Hot in Death Valley
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| Plotted by: Steve Horstmeyer, Data: GHCN, via https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm/ |
In June the Heat Was Staggering
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| Plotted by: Steve Horstmeyer, Data: GHCN, via https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm/ |
In July it Was Hotter for the Month than in Any Other Place Accurately Measured, EVER!
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| Plotted by: Steve Horstmeyer, Data: GHCN, via https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm/ |
Death Valley not only feels like the hottest place on Earth, the staggering numbers confirm it.
All Places and All Months on Earth with an
Average Monthly Temperature 105°F (40.6°C) or Warmer
Data Extracted from : The Global Historical Climatology Network by Brian Brettschneider.
See his excellent article by Christopher C. Burt, using this data,
on Death Valley's Record Hottest Month here:
on Death Valley's Record Hottest Month here:
Notice that of the 39 occurrences of a monthly average temperature 105°F (40.6°C) or hotter, 35 occur in the 4 stations (Furnace Creek, Cow Creek, Greenland Ranch, Stovepipe Wells) found in Death Valley.
Christopher C. Burt in the article linked above makes an excellent case for July 2017 in Death Valley being the hottest reliably measured average monthly temperature on Earth. The observations in Saudi Arabia at King Khaled Military City just do not pass muster.
All dates highlighted in yellow are occurrences NOT during July.
107.44
|
201408
|
King Khaled Military
City, Saudi Arabia
|
107.24
|
201707
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
107.02
|
200207
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.97
|
200607
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.79
|
191707
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.74
|
192907
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.63
|
200507
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.56
|
193307
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.39
|
200307
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.38
|
195907
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.32
|
195907
|
Cow Creek
|
106.32
|
192707
|
Greenland Ranch
|
106.25
|
191508
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.21
|
195907
|
Greenland Ranch
|
106.20
|
192707
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
106.09
|
191508
|
Greenland Ranch
|
105.91
|
200707
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.71
|
194207
|
Greenland Ranch
|
105.66
|
192408
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.64
|
201707
|
Stove Pipe Wells
|
105.60
|
200607
|
Stove Pipe Wells
|
105.55
|
201007
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.53
|
199407
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.44
|
201507
|
King Khaled Military
City, Saudi Arabia
|
105.31
|
201307
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.31
|
191907
|
Greenland Ranch
|
105.30
|
199808
|
King Khaled Military
City, Saudi Arabia
|
105.30
|
195307
|
Cow Creek
|
105.30
|
195307
|
Greenland Ranch
|
105.26
|
199607
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.17
|
194606
|
Sibi, Pakistan
|
105.15
|
201607
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.10
|
196007
|
Cow Creek
|
105.10
|
192107
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.10
|
194207
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.10
|
200807
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.10
|
200907
|
Furnace Creek, Death
Valley
|
105.04
|
200507
|
Stove Pipe Wells
|
105.01
|
195207
|
Cow Creek
|
The long term average is 39/106 which is one occurrence every 2.7 years. Since the year 2000 16/18 which is one occurrence every 1.13 years. If the data passes quality checks this could be a strong signal of warming,
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