Hotter than Hell in Phoenix!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist 

My last home on the road before returning to Missouri to retire in 2014 was in the western suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, an enclave of several million people that sits smack-dab in the middle of a desert.  Parts of Arizona are picturesque, like Sedona and Jerome, and others, like Flagstaff and Tucson, are more obliging in terms of climate, but Phoenix is just a hot patch of desert.

Phoenix lacks elevation, something that would provide the inhabitants with a break from the overbearing heat.  In fact, the city sits in a hole - something the folks in the Chamber of Commerce refer to as a valley - as in "The Valley of the Sun."  And damned if it isn't!  The sun is so intense - and regular - in and around Phoenix that former governor Janet Napolitano once joked that when it rained in Phoenix it made the front page of the local newspaper - except she really wasn't joking!  Rain and dust storms are both very newsworthy in Phoenix.

This past Wednesday I heard a report on the radio which said that Phoenix had just beaten its old record for the most days in a single year with temperatures over 100 degrees.  The old record of 143 days with temperatures above 100 degrees was set in 1989.  Wednesday marked the 144th day that the temperature had topped the century mark in Phoenix in 2020 -  and the next day, Thursday, the temperature reached 102 degrees marking new records for both the string of days above 100 degrees as well was for the hottest temperature on record for that particular day - beating the old record of 101 degrees that was set in 1991.

I remember June as being the absolute worst month to be in Phoenix.  The last June that I was in residence there, June of 2013, there was a week - about the third week if I remember correctly - when the temperature was above 120 degrees every day.  I had a friend visiting from Okinawa that week, and he commented, "My God, Rock, how can you live like this!"  The secret to survival was, of course, to run from one air-conditioned building to another.  It was so hot that June that some flights had to be cancelled at Sky Harbor Airport because the asphalt on the runways was melting!   True story!

But this summer was hotter.

This July was officially the hottest July on record in Phoenix - and the hottest month on record in the city.  But the next month, August,  soon became the hottest month on record in Phoenix, and the hottest August ever!  And, not surprisingly, this summer also proved to be the hottest summer on record in the Valley of the Sun.

And there were other honors:   The summer of 2020 produced the most 90-degree nights in the city.  The temperature never dropped below 90 degrees on twenty-eight nights, trouncing the old record of fifteen such nights in 2003 and 2013.  Phoenix had more 110-degree days (fifty) than the previous record of thirty-three in 2011, and the city also set a record for days above 115 degrees.  Several "hottest day" records were set over the summer.  And, to frost that sticky cake, the city of Phoenix also had a record number of excessive heat warnings issued over the course of the summer - forty-three in all - far more than in any other year.

In analyzing this continuing heat situation in Phoenix, scientists note that a combination of a weather pattern conducive to heat, urbanization, and long-term, human-caused climate change all played a role in Phoenix's historically hot summer.  And, as the amount of concrete and asphalt on the floor of the Valley of the Sun keeps spreading, and as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate, the climate crisis in and around Phoenix is likely to get worse.  

There is one other factor that may be at play around Phoenix as well.  My buddy, Desert Pete, likes to tell of the time a few years ago when he was looking for a place to bury his mule out in the Sonora Desert just west of Phoenix.  He finally found a spot that appealed to him and proceeded to shovel a hole into the sandy desert floor.  Pete said that he was less than two feet down when he his a cast iron barrier.  He tried digging around it, but the "danged thing" (Pete's words) went on forever.  And it was hot!  Pete reasoned that he had just struck the ceiling of one of the main furnace rooms of Hell.  

And Desert Pete would never lie - but I might!

Regardless of the causes, it looks as though the hot times in Phoenix are destined to continue - at least for the foreseeable future.  

(And for my friends still living in Phoenix and running from one air-conditioned building to another, know this:  there are currently three nice houses for sale on my street here in southern Missouri, each with lush green grass and beautiful tall trees - and each priced at what a small brown hovel with no yard would cost  in Phoenix!)

Just sayin' . . .