Death Valley could reach 54.4 degrees, which would be the highest temperature ever recorded in the world

Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

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

So hot that it is possible that California’s Death Valley will reach 54.4 degrees Celsius by Sunday night, almost setting or breaking the world heat record.

In Death Valley National Park, which stretches between Eastern California and Nevada, temperatures are expected to reach highs of around 54.4 degrees in Furnace Creek overnight from Sunday to Wednesday and remain so until Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service’s weather forecast.

According to the National Weather Service in Las Vegas, the heat could approach the world’s highest temperature record of 56.4 degrees Celsius, measured on July 10, 1913, at the Greenland Ranch in Death Valley.

On Friday the temperature there reached 58 °C.

The highest temperature ever officially recorded on Earth was 134 degrees in Death Valley in July 1913. However, some claim this figure is incorrect and the true record is 130 degrees Fahrenheit, measured there in July 2021.

According to the National Weather Service, nearly 70 million people were under heat warnings on Sunday after more than three dozen temperature records were either reached or broken on Saturday.

On Saturday, temperatures in Las Vegas reached 46 degrees, breaking records set in 2007 and 1989. In Kingman, Arizona, temperatures reached 42 degrees, beating the previous record of 42 degrees.

California also saw several record temperatures in the Sacramento area, including in Redding, where temperatures reached 48 degrees Celsius, breaking the previous temperature record of 47 degrees Celsius, according to the Sacramento Weather Service.