It’s getting hot out there

Yes, it’s hot outside.

That much is obvious to anyone who opens their front door (and will be obvious to anyone with an air conditioner when they see their bill for July).

But just how hot is it really? As in, are records being broken?

That is a less straightforward question than one might think. Like most municipalities that have an airport, the official temperature reading for Boulder City is at the airport. If you check any online weather source, most will specify that the reading was taken at the airport. The airport is owned and run by the city. So one might expect that the city would have some kind of historical temperature record.

But, no. Inquiries about temperature records were referred by a city spokesperson to the National Weather Service. And an email querie to that federal agency was not returned before press time.

Another suggested source for info was the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum. Staff at the museum were helpful and in response to a question about heat records, gathered a package of historical documents including scans of newspaper clippings from the 1930s. While it’s interesting to know that temperatures in Black Canyon during the construction of Hoover Dam sometimes blew past 125 degrees, it doesn’t really help if you are looking for info on Boulder City proper.

But using a combination of online services, including wunderground.com, weatherspark.com, wanderlog.com and the ever-popular Google search, we can at least get an idea.

July is, according to all sources, the hottest month of the year in Boulder City. Depending on the source, average highs for the month are listed as being somewhere between 102 and 105 degrees.

That average makes a difference. The World Meteorological Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. The WMO defines a heat wave as at least five days in a row where temperatures exceed nine degrees above average.

By that definition, depending on which source you use for the average, Boulder City (along with the rest of Southern Nevada) has been in the grips of a heat wave since Saturday when daily temperatures began to exceed 111. That trend is predicted to continue through Saturday. Residents may start to get a break starting Sunday when the prediction is for a “hardly warm” 107 with temperatures expected to be higher than average at least through Wednesday.

So, about that record.

Daily data is available via wunderground.com going back to 2010. Using July 16 as the marker date (when temperatures this year topped out at a blazing 115 degrees), one can say for sure that it was the hottest July 16 in more than a decade. The closest it came to this year’s record was 109 degrees back in 2019.

There are some services available in town for relief. The Senior Center (as seen in the photo accompanying this story) was handing out bottled water earlier this week. Additionally, the Boulder City Library is an official cooling station. The overheated can duck into the air-conditioned building between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Library staff asks that all food be confined to the lobby.