LAS VEGAS — Sin City is sizzling.
Record–hot temperatures over the past week have turned the Las Vegas Valley into a giant oven, forcing officials to close public pools and museums, driving people indoors for most of the day and baking sidewalks hot enough to fry an egg on.
The Las Vegas Strip, usually packed with tourists, was a shadow of its normal rowdy self during Thursday’s peak afternoon hours, as the sun beat down on the casino-lined boulevard. Downtown’s Fremont Street was also sparser than usual, with fewer street performers braving the roasting temperatures to charm wide-eyed out-of-towners.
As the city on Friday stared down a new record of seven-straight days of temperatures at or above 115 degrees Fahrenheit, conditions have become intolerable even for those who are used to desert climes.
“This heat wave is a totally different animal,” said Dan Berc, a warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas. “We’re breaking all sorts of records.”
The city set a new all-time heat record of 120 degrees on July 7. On Wednesday, the city broke its previous streak set in 2005 of four consecutive days at or above 115 degrees, before breaking it again on Thursday and again on Friday.Extreme heat gripped much of the western United States last week, with around 42 million people under heat alerts Friday across the region and into the Rocky Mountains and southeast Texas. At least 38 people are suspected to have died in six states as a result of heat-related illnesses.
“I’ve lived here in southern Nevada, in Las Vegas, for 18 years, and it’s definitely hotter this year than it has been in the past,” said Krishell Hadsell, a social service manager for Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, Boulder City, Henderson and neighboring towns.
Hadsell oversees more than 40 cooling centers that are currently operating in Clark County. These facilities, which range from libraries to churches to recreation centers, are air-conditioned havens that provide shelter for people during the hottest times of the day.
As temperatures in Las Vegas spiked to record highs, the heat has affected people’s daily routines.
Scott Vivier, deputy fire chief at the Henderson Fire Department, said he and his wife have to do household chores and go grocery shopping early in the mornings to avoid the heat. By 9:30 a.m., he said, even being in the car is sometimes too much to bear.
“We’ve become creatures of the morning and the late night,” Vivier said.
The extreme heat forced the Neon Museum near downtown Las Vegas to temporarily close its doors multiple times last week.
“Due to an extended extreme heat advisory in the Las Vegas valley, The Neon Museum is delaying opening until 8:30 p.m.” officials said on the museum’s website Friday. The museum showcases some of the most iconic and historic neon signs in Las Vegas history in an outdoor “boneyard.”
Still, museumgoers were likely to find conditions stifling even in the evening hours. Overnight temperatures last week have hovered in the 90s.
The heat similarly forced officials in Henderson to close public pools early on Thursday and Friday.
“Due to the scorching temperatures, our inclement weather closure policy was triggered,” city officials said in a post on Facebook.
At the Henderson Fire Department, first responders have found new ways to cope with heat-related emergencies. Firefighters there are the first in southern Nevada to be equipped with “polar pods” to rescue people suffering from heatstroke. The pods are essentially large, watertight bags filled with ice and water that people can be submerged into to rapidly cool their internal temperature.
“In the past, unless we could cool down the central nervous system, we weren’t having a lot of success,” Vivier said of responding to heatstroke patients. “Now, this is the first treatment we have where it’s been proven that within 10 minutes, you can get someone’s core temperature from 109 degrees to 102 degrees, which then allows us to really intervene and reverse a life-threatening emergency.”
Since May 1, the Henderson Fire Department has seen a 53% increase in calls for heat-related emergencies, according to Vivier.
A heat advisory remained in place through Friday in Las Vegas, but even after temperatures dip slightly, there will be little reprieve from the heat. On Sunday, the city set another new record of 11 consecutive days at or above 110 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
“If you can, it’s best to hunker down and just stay in,” Berc said. “It’s much like you would during a snowstorm in winter, but it’s the opposite here in the summer.”
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