A dangerous 19th straight day of scorching heat in Phoenix set a record for US cities Tuesday, confined many residents to air-conditioned safety and turned the usually vibrant metropolis into a ghost town. Know more:
A digital billboard displays an unofficial temperature in Monday, July 17, 2023, in downtown Phoenix.PHOENIX—A dangerous 19th straight day of scorching heat in Phoenix set a record for US cities Tuesday, confined many residents to air-conditioned safety and turned the usually vibrant metropolis into a ghost town.
“When you have several million people subjected to that sort of thermal abuse, there are impacts,” said NOAA Climate Analysis Group Director Russell Vose, who chairs a committee on national records. Dog parks emptied out by the mid-morning and evening concerts and other outdoor events were cancelled to protect performers and attendees. The city’s Desert Botanical Garden, a vast outdoor collection of cactus and other desert plants, over the weekend began shutting down at 2 p.m. before the hottest part of the day.
The entire globe has simmered to record heat both in June and July. Nearly every day of this month, the global average temperature has been warmer than the unofficial hottest day recorded before 2023, according to University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. US weather stations have broken more than 860 heat records in the past seven days, according to NOAA.
Phoenix City Parks and Recreation workers Joseph Garcia, 48, and Roy Galindo, 28, tried to stay cool as they trimmed shrubs. They work from 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. to avoid the hottest time of the day.