World record: Would you survive at 56.7°C? This is the temperature expected in the next few days in Death Valley
The heat was extreme, especially between California and Nevada, where in the most depressed areas, in the middle of the desert, it exceeded +50°C. In the legendary Death Valley, the Furnace Creek meteorological station recorded a maximum of +53.9°C.
![Death valley, temperature. Death valley, temperature.](https://services.meteored.com/img/article/caldo-eccezionale-nel-sud-ovest-degli-stati-uniti-la-death-valley-ad-un-passo-dal-record-di-caldo-mondiale-1720474551244_1024.jpg)
The sinking of a secondary branch of the "polar jet stream" over the Pacific, in the stretch in front of the Oregon and California coasts, has caused a strengthening of the Mexican sub-tropical anticyclonic promontory, which has dominated the southwestern states for days , between Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and inland areas of California, from where it sucks in truly "hot" air masses, stagnant for weeks above the extensive desert surfaces.
This sub-tropical anticyclonic promontory, thanks to the strengthening of the "thick advection" over the central-western United States, transformed into a real blocking anticyclone which pushed with its own direct axis towards central-western Canada, pushing the very hot and dry air masses, originating from the desert surfaces of the southwestern USA, in much of the Middle West, well beyond the Canadian border.
Reached +54.1°C in Death Valley
The heat last weekend was extreme, especially between California and Nevada, where in the most depressed areas, in the middle of the desert, it exceeded +50°C. In the legendary Death Valley, the Furnace Creek meteorological station recorded a maximum of +54.1°C, just +0.5°C from its most reliable absolute and world record.
![heat wave. heat wave.](https://services.meteored.com/img/article/caldo-eccezionale-nel-sud-ovest-degli-stati-uniti-la-death-valley-ad-un-passo-dal-record-di-caldo-mondiale-1720474770341_1024.png)
In fact, the recent value of +54.4 °C in August 2020 was considered the most reliable maximum value recorded on Earth so far. Regarding Furnace Creek, the temperature record of +56.7 °C, recorded on 10 July 1913, although validated by the WMO, has over time been questioned by some climatologists and historians. The main criticisms concern the possible unreliability of the measurement instruments of the time and the conditions for recording the data.
But peaks of over +47°C +48°C were reached in many other locations in Nevada and Arizona, due to the strong heat wave persisting throughout the south-west of the States. The map of the baric field on the ground highlights the notable "adiabatic compression", induced by "atmospheric subsidences" (very slow descending motions), which are usually generated when a thermal inversion from the middle troposphere propagates to the lower layers of the 'atmosphere.
The rise in temperatures in the lower layers is determined by the hot advection due to thermal advection, "adiabatic compression" and high insolation in July.
Why are such high values reached in Death Valley?
The intense heat wave, rising from the Mexican desert hinterland, has transformed the "Death Valley" into an open-air oven in recent days. Very probably also in the next few days, the "Death Valley", the hottest point on Earth, still holder of the absolute world heat record of +54.4°C, risks breaking through the wall of +51°C +52°C again.
Moreover, given the particular closed orography, this depression, which extends between the California desert and the state of Nevada, is the "hottest" point on our planet.
![death valley death valley](https://services.meteored.com/img/article/caldo-eccezionale-nel-sud-ovest-degli-stati-uniti-la-death-valley-ad-un-passo-dal-record-di-caldo-mondiale-1720474608937_1024.jpg)
For several times, during the summer period, with the sun approaching the "Zenith" (sun rays almost perpendicular to the horizon in the central hours of the day), it is possible to break through the wall of +50°C in the shade during the summer.
This is when the intense and prolonged daytime sunshine (constantly clear or little cloudy skies) combined with the very low relative humidity rates (5-6%) significantly heat the desert terrain, completely bare of tree vegetation in vast stretches (only in winter and in spring, when short showers of rain occur, the desert surface blooms again for a few days), transforming the area into a sort of large natural "oven" that radiates a truly infernal and unbearable heat.
It is no coincidence that the name "Death Valley" is given to it. If the western states deal with this strong heat wave, a flow of slightly cooler air will slide downhill from the states of central-eastern Canada to the east.