Deadly Phoenix Sun Demands a More Forceful Defense
The city’s pavements can give you third-degree burns. How does the Valley of the Sun combat that kind of heat?
Deadly heat.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images North AmericaFor most of the US, summer began after Memorial Day and ended somewhere around Labor Day. For Phoenix, Arizona, it began shortly after Easter and ended a couple of weeks before Halloween.
And it wasn’t just any summer: The city experienced a record-smashing 113 straight days with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 61 of those crossing 110F. The previous record was 76 days. Then, after a brief dip into the crisp high 90s in mid-September, temperatures soared past 100F again. Phoenix then suffered through 21 straight days of record highs stretching into mid-October. On Oct. 6, when many of us were starting to think about carving pumpkins, it was 113F in Phoenix.