134 degrees Fahrenheit. That was the temperature in Death Valley in 1913, the hottest ever recorded on Earth, although some weather historians have challenged that number. They argue that the true hottest temperature recorded, also in Death Valley, was 130 degrees Fahrenheit in July 2021. That has become the “reliably” measured hottest temp to beat. And plenty of tourists, amidst forecasts that it could be breached earlier this summer, flocked to the national park hoping to experience it.
That quest ended in tragedy when 71-year-old Steve Curry died just hours after he was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times:
“It’s a dry heat,” said Steve Curry, 71, who was visiting Death Valley from the Sunland neighborhood of Los Angeles. No stranger to heat, Curry had hiked from Golden Canyon to Zabrieski Point early Tuesday morning and was scrunched into a tiny spot of shade beneath a metal interpretive sign.
“Everything is hot here,” he said, rapping on the metal.
It makes you wonder about the ethics of the national park encouraging park visitation to experience deadly heat. In 2021, after upgrades to the digital thermometer that is a standard tourist photo op were completed, David Blacker, executive director of the Death Valley Natural History Association, said, “We know many visitors come to experience the world record heat and want a photograph to commemorate their visit. The improved thermometer will better serve those needs.”
“Nothing excites me like sharing the unique characteristics of Death Valley,” Mike Reynolds, superintendent of Death Valley National Park, added. “The upgraded thermometer will make it even easier for visitors to appreciate our extreme climate.”
Even though Backpacker has pointed out that motor vehicles kill more people in the park than heat, how many heat exposure deaths are considered acceptable? Warnings about the dangers of heat should be as excessive as the heat itself, at the bare minimum.
I started this post on a Friday afternoon in July and then immediately went on a run when it was still quite sunny and hot. After crossing the bridge into Manhattan I felt extremely ill, even after stopping to walk and drink water. I was dizzy and faint, I couldn’t stop hyperventilating, and my throat felt constricted and painful. I tried to walk it off but eventually had to sit on the curb until I could breathe normally and no longer felt like I was going to pass out. Only after I started to feel better and my vision began to clear did I realize that it had been narrow and tunneled.
It was scary and humbling, especially as someone who has reported on the dangers of heat stress! I self-diagnosed myself with some early-stage exercise-induced heat exhaustion, and idiocy. (I knew I wasn’t feeling hydrated, fueled, or rested enough for that particular workout in the heat as soon as I left the house, but wasn’t willing to compromise until my body said I had to.)
Although I started this post in July and I’m wrapping it up at the beginning of September, extreme heat is still unfortunately all too relevant. My family in Kansas just endured a brutal heatwave that fried the garden. Nearby Wichita was one of the many cities this summer that broke multiple record daily high temperatures this summer. (I won’t list all those events here but Forbes has an exhaustive timeline.)
More than 57 million people last Saturday were under excessive heat warnings; another 54 million were under heat advisories. It’s been so hot in Arizona this summer that people are going to hospital burn units after falling on the scalding asphalt!
“Summers are our busy season, so we anticipate that this sort of thing is going to happen. But this is really unusual—the number of patients that we’re seeing and the severity of injuries—the acuity of injuries is much higher,” Kevin Foster, director of burn services at the Arizona Burn Center, told CNN. “The numbers are higher and the seriousness of injuries are higher, and we don’t have a good explanation for it.”
Experts expect the death toll from extreme heat to be higher than ever this year. People who work outside—like farm and construction workers, mail and delivery drivers, landscapers, traffic control workers—are at particular risk, but instead of protecting these vulnerable populations, the state of Texas has barred cities and local governments from enacting laws that guarantee water breaks or other measures put in place to protect workers from extreme heat. People who recreate outside can choose if and when to exert themselves in the heat; workers generally don’t have that luxury.
Read more: “The blast of a million hair dryers—that’s what it felt like.” Katie O'Reilly on visiting Death Valley on one of the hottest days ever. (September 2020)
Having never visited Death Valley myself (yet), the photographs in this post are by retired elementary teacher Judy Baxter, who has a very nice eye for composition and color.