Las Vegas temperature reaches record high 74

If the weather seemed especially pleasant on Monday, you're right. In fact, it was record pleasant.

The temperature hit 74 degrees at the valley's official weather station at McCarran International Airport on Monday afternoon.

That shatters with warm loveliness the previous high for this date, a slightly less beautiful 72 degrees posted on Jan. 17, 1976.

Nobody seemed to notice it was a record, but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

At the Springs Preserve, the Las Vegas Valley Water District's monument to desert living, people walked the trails, pushed strollers through the botanical garden and lounged in the sunshine.

England native Suzi Byrnes didn't know about the record, but she wasn't surprised to hear about it as she sat in the sun and watched her son and daughter run around the preserve's amphitheater.

"I have a friend who was forced to go back to Canada and the snow," Byrnes said. "I was thinking how grateful I am to live here."

She said she spent part of her morning working in her garden and wishing for a pair of shorts. Her 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, asked her if it was summer.

"I had to teach her the word anomaly," Byrnes said.

On a patch of artificial grass nearby, Brooke Thomas danced in a strapless top and wrestled with her grinning 2-year-old daughter.

Thomas said she visits the Springs Preserve regularly, especially when the weather's nice in winter, which is most of the time compared with where she grew up in Iowa.

"I'm from the Midwest, so this isn't cold, the cold here," she said.

Then Thomas and her daughter went back to dancing to the song being piped in over the public address system, "Beach Baby" by the First Class.

Our pleasantness hit its peak about 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, just as several spots across the country were competing for the title of "place we would all least like to be."

In Devils Lake, N.D., the temperature was 4 degrees below zero; in Berlin, N.H., it was minus 6, and in McGrath, Alaska, 240 miles northwest of Anchorage, it was minus 31, a full 105 degrees colder than here.

"That's not compatible with human life," said Clay Morgan, a Las Vegas-based National Weather Service meteorologist who was only half kidding.

Las Vegas' average high for this date is 57.

"I chose to live here because I can take my children outside 365 days a year," Byrnes said from behind a pair of sunglasses. "This is the same as the most pleasant day of the year in England."

If there was a downside to Monday's record, it was the timing of it all. We got 10 hours and 2 minutes of daylight to enjoy the unprecedented pleasantness.

On the longest day of the year, we can count on 14 hours and 37 minutes of sunshine. And if it's a record, the high temperature will be 112 at least.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@review journal.com or 702-383-0350.