DEATH VALLEY, Calif. — There’s hot and then there’s HOT. Death Valley’s Furnace Creek lived up to its name when it hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday.
The Southern California desert may have just broken the record for the U.S., recording the hottest temperature in the country since 1913, if not the hottest temperature ever recorded in the world, The Washington Post reported.
The last time it was nearly that high was in 1913 when there was a mark of 134 degrees, but experts are not sure if that was accurate and say that number, along with other high temperatures, were actually an observer’s error. Other observations from that time do not match the historic records, CBS News reported.
There was also a temperature reading of 131 degrees in 1931 for Tunisia, but records from Africa during the colonial period have “serious credibility issues.”
The hottest temperature reliably recorded was 129.2 degrees also in Death Valley in 2013, CBS News reported.
As for Sunday’s record, weather experts hope it will be confirmed.
“Everything I’ve seen so far indicates that is a legitimate observation,” wrote Randy Cerveny, head of the World Meteorological Organization’s weather and climate extremes team, according to The Washington Post. “I am recommending that the World Meteorological Organization preliminarily accept the observation. In the upcoming weeks, we will, of course, be examining it in detail, along with the U.S. National Climate Extremes Committee, using one of our international evaluation teams.”
But Death Valley isn’t the only one in the middle of a massive heat wave. Record-breaking heat is stretching across the western part of the country from Arizona to Washington. Several cities hit record temperatures Saturday.
At least it was all a dry heat!