Heatwave in the United States: Tourists continue to flock to Death Valley

DEATH VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — Hundreds of Europeans touring the American West and adventurers from across the United States continue to be drawn to Death Valley National Park, even as the desolate region, known as one of the hottest places on Earth, is gripped by a dangerous heat wave. accused of causing the death of a motorcyclist during the weekend.

This week, tourists from France, Spain, England and Switzerland stepped out of their air-conditioned rental cars to snap photos of the barren landscape, so different from the snow-capped mountains and rolling green hills they know at home. American adventurers enjoyed the novelty of the scenery, even as park officials in California warned visitors to exercise caution.

“I was excited that it was so warm,” said Drew Belt, a Tupelo, Mississippi, resident who wanted to stop in Death Valley, the lowest point in the United States, before climbing Mount Whitney in California. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It’s like walking on Mars.”

The scorching heat wave hitting large parts of the United States has also resulted in daily records high temperatures in Oregon, where it is suspected of causing six deaths, the state medical examiner’s office said Tuesday. 161 million people Heat alerts have been issued across the United States, particularly in western states.

Dozens of locations across the West and Pacific Northwest matched or broke previous heat records over the weekend and are expected to continue doing so this week.

In Death Valley National Park, tourists line up to have their picture taken in front of a giant thermometer that the National Park Service keeps near the visitor center. It’s not accurate, registering a temperature 1 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the more modern instruments kept by the National Weather Service nearby, making for a more impressive reading for photos.

“It’s not cited as an official temperature sensor,” said Dan Berc, a warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Las Vegas.

“This is an incredibly popular place, as you can see by the visitors behind me,” said Jeanette Jurado, the park’s ranger, as she looked at the thermometer reading 110.5 degrees Fahrenheit (48.9 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday. “But even in the winter, people might find that 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) in December is unusual and worthy of a photo.”

An excessive heat warning was also issued Tuesday for much of Washington and Oregon, with a potential risk of temperatures reaching 109.5 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas, posing a major risk for heat-related illnesses, the National Weather Service said. Temperatures in parts of Idaho, including Boise, were expected to reach more than 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday.

The early heat wave in the United States came as global temperatures in June hit record highs for the 13th consecutive month Global warming has reached 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in a month, the European climate service Copernicus said. Most of that heat, trapped by human-caused climate change, comes from long-term warming caused by greenhouse gases emitted by burning coal, oil and natural gas, scientists said.

In the scorching desert of eastern California, a maximum temperature of 53.3 °C was recorded this weekend in Death Valley National Park, where a visitor, whose identity has not been released, died Saturday from heat exposure. Another person was hospitalized.

They were among six motorcyclists who were traveling through the Badwater Basin area in scorching weather, the park said in a statement. The other four were treated at the scene. Emergency medical helicopters were unable to respond because planes typically cannot safely fly above 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48.8 degrees Celsius), authorities said.

Death Valley is considered one of the most extreme environments in the world. The highest temperature ever officially recorded on Earth was 56.67 °C (134 °F) in July 1913 in Death Valley, although some experts dispute this measurement and claim that the true record was 54.4 °C (130 °F), recorded there in July 2021.

“It’s impressive,” Thomas Mrzliek of Basel, Switzerland, said of the triple-digit heat. “It’s like a wave hitting you when you get out of the car, but it’s very dry heat. So it’s not like in Europe.”

Across the Nevada desert in Las Vegas, temperatures had already reached 102.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 9:30 a.m. Tuesday and were likely to approach 110.8 degrees Fahrenheit again by the end of the day.

“The intense heat wave will continue to break records through the end of the week before easing as increasing monsoon moisture returns to the region,” the National Weather Service in Las Vegas said.

In Arizona, average temperatures for the first eight days of July were the highest on record in Phoenix and Yuma, the National Weather Service in Phoenix said. It said both cities will remain about 10 degrees above normal over the next few days, with highs generally ranging from 110.5 to 120.5 degrees.

Extreme heat and prolonged drought in the West have also dried out vegetation that fuels wildfires.

In California, firefighters were battling at least 18 wildfires Tuesday, including a 42-square-mile (106-square-kilometer) blaze in the mountains of Santa Barbara County. The Lake Fire was only 12% contained, and forecasters warned of a “volatile combination” of high heat, low humidity and northwest winds developing late in the day.

North of Los Angeles, the 2-square-mile Vista Fire has destroyed trees in the San Bernardino National Forest and sent a huge plume of smoke across the region. A smaller but smoky Royal Fire has burned more than 150 acres of forest west of Lake Tahoe and rained ash on the California resort town of Truckee. Neither fire was contained Tuesday.

The National Weather Service announced Tuesday that it was extending excessive heat warnings across much of the southwestern United States through Saturday morning.

“Unusually warm temperatures are expected to persist through Friday, and then, with increasing cloud cover, Saturday morning’s minimum temperatures could be the warmest of this entire episode,” the Reno service said. “Thursday could end up being the warmest day in most locations, so it’s not over yet.”

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Snow reported from Phoenix. AP reporters Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Christopher Weber and John Antczak in Los Angeles; and Scott Sonner and Gabe Stern in Reno, Nevada, contributed to this report.