Death Valley May Hit 130 Degrees, Which Would Tie World’s Hottest Recorded Temperature

It’s hot out there, folks. How hot was it?

So hot that it’s possible California’s Death Valley could reach 130 degrees by Sunday night and come close to tying or breaking the world heat record.

The temperature at Death Valley National Park, which stretches between eastern California and Nevada, is expected to reach highs around 130 degrees at Furnace Creek on Sunday night and extend through Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service forecast.

The heat could creep close to the world’s record highest temperature of 134 degrees, marked at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley on July 10, 1913, according to the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas. 

The temperature there reached 127 F on Friday.

The hottest temperature ever officially recorded on Earth was 134 degrees in Death Valley in July 1913. But some claim that number is off, and the real record was 130 F, recorded there in July 2021.

Nearly 70 million people are under heat alerts Sunday, after over three dozen high-temperature records were either set or tied on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.

On Saturday, Las Vegas reached 115 degrees, tying records in 2007 and 1989. Kingman, Arizona, reached 109 degrees, breaking its previous record of 108.

In California, several record highs were also set in the Sacramento area, including in Redding, where it reached 119 degrees and beat the all-time high temperature record of 118, according to the weather service in Sacramento.