Death Valley, known for extremes, is facing intense heat weeks after record rain
Death Valley National Park is living up to its reputation as having one of the world’s most extreme climates: The Southern California park is in the midst of one of its most intense September heat waves, weeks after it established a record for its most extreme deluge, park officials announced Thursday.
Park rangers manually recorded 1.70 inches of rainfall on Aug. 5, making it officially the rainiest day on the books at the infamously arid landscape. Renowned for its hot and dry conditions, Death Valley averages just 0.11 inches of rain in August and 2.2 inches in an entire year.
The flooding on Aug. 5 washed out several roads, including the main highway into the park, Route 190. That highway has since reopened, but many other roadways are still too damaged to allow cars to travel on, with pavement entirely washed away by the rushing waters that enveloped parts of the park.
The historic rainfall, triggered by this year’s unusually strong Southwest monsoon, also temporarily stranded around 1,000 people. Businesses and hotel rooms flooded, while cars were trapped in parking lots by floating garbage bins or immobilized by debris flows.
The Death Valley flood also came amid significant flooding events that seemed to hit all corners of the country. From the end of July to the middle of August, four 1-in-1,000-year rain events occurred — inundating St. Louis, eastern Kentucky, southeast Illinois and Dallas. Earlier this summer, Yellowstone National Park also experienced devastating flooding.
From record rain to record heat
Though park rangers in Death Valley are not yet done cleaning up from the flooding, Mother Nature has moved on.
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On Thursday, temperatures in the park reached 124.4 degrees Fahrenheit, just 1.6 degrees below the highest temperature ever recorded in September anywhere in the world — 126 degrees Fahrenheit.
That record reading was measured in Mecca, Calif., in September 1950, which is a little over 300 miles south of Death Valley.
This weekend, Death Valley has a real chance to break some of its own heat records — if not the worldwide high-temperature record for September.
The National Weather Service is forecasting a high of 124 degrees on Friday, a number that would smash the previous high for Sept. 2 — 122 degrees — which was set in 2017. Saturday’s record is also a candidate to be rewritten, with a forecast high of 123 degrees, two degrees higher than the former record, which was set in 2007.
The most extreme heat doesn’t arrive until Labor Day, though. The current forecast from the NWS has temperatures in Death Valley rising to a wicked 125 degrees, making it more than possible that the temperature there will not only break the local record but also manages to rise past the global all-time high for September.
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Another 125-degree day is also forecast for Tuesday, giving the park’s Furnace Creek station at least two serious chances next week to smash the monthly record.
Death Valley already holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth, as well as several runners-up. Officially, Death Valley reached 134 degrees on July 10, 1913. But that record has been questioned by several climatologists — as has the next-highest temperature: 131 degrees measured in Kebili, Tunisia, on July 7, 1931.
In 2020 and 2021, the temperature in Death Valley reached 130 degrees without controversy, making the two measurements the highest pair of reliably measured temperatures on Earth.
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