The first heat wave of the year is expected to maintain its hold on the southwestern United States for at least one more day Friday, a day after records fell across the region as temperatures soared above 110 degrees Fahrenheit ( 43 degrees Celsius) from southeastern California to Arizona. .
Although the official start of summer is still two weeks away, roughly half of Arizona and Nevada were under an excessive heat warning that the National Weather Service extended through Friday evening. The alert was extended through Saturday in Las Vegas, where it had never been so hot earlier in the year.
“High temperatures 10 to 15 degrees above normal can be expected, with record high temperatures likely in some locations through Friday,” the Las Vegas weather service said. It said temperatures will slowly cool over the weekend but remain above normal until early next week.
“It’s so hot here,” said 9-year-old Eleanor Wallace, who came to Phoenix from northern Utah on Thursday while hiking to celebrate her birthday with her mother, Megan Wallace.
The National Weather Service in Phoenix, where a new record high of 113 F (45 C) on Thursday surpassed the old mark of 111 F (44 C) set in 2016, called conditions “dangerously hot.”
There were no immediate reports of any heat-related deaths or serious injuries.
But at a campaign rally in support of the presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in PhoenixBy evening, 11 people fell ill from heat exhaustion and were taken to a hospital, where they were treated and released, fire officials said.
And in Las Vegas, where a new record high of 111 (43.8°C) was set Thursday, also matching the earliest time of year the high has reached at least 110 (43.3°C), the Clark County Fire Department said , which responded to at least 12 calls for help. exposure to heat since midnight Wednesday. Nine of these calls resulted in the patient requiring inpatient treatment.
Several other areas of Arizona, California and Nevada also broke records by one or two degrees, including Death Valley National Park with a record date of 122 (50 C), surpassing 121 (49.4 C) dated 1996 in the desert. which is 194 feet (59 meters) below sea level, near the California-Nevada line. The records there date back to 1911.
The heat has arrived a few weeks earlier than usual, even in places further north, at higher elevations, places are usually a dozen degrees cooler. That includes Reno, where the normal high of 81 F (27 C) for this time of year soared to a record 98 F (37 C) on Thursday. Records there date back to 1888.
The National Weather Service is forecasting a slight cooldown across the region this weekend, but only by a few degrees. In central and southern Arizona, this will still mean triple-digit highs, even as high as 110 F (43 C).
On Thursday in Phoenix, unseasonably hot weather didn’t stop Oscar Tomasio of Cleveland, Ohio, from proposing to his girlfriend Megan McCracken as they reached the trailhead on Camelback Mountain carrying 3 liters of water.
“It was a grueling hike,” Tomasio told The Associated Press. “It was very hot, so we started very early.”
“The views were beautiful. We didn’t make it to the top because she was a little nervous about the heat,” he said. “So I proposed to her as the sun came up.”
McCracken confirmed that they planned the hike at dawn and woke up around 5 a.m., trying to escape the heat and the looming trail closure.
“Probably not early enough,” she said.
Megan Wallace, the birthday girl’s mother from Utah, who also showed up with water bottles, said, “We started just a few minutes after 6 and it looked like we came prepared, but we drank all the water and it was hot – it got even hotter.” than we are used to.”