Las Vegans dealing with record heat
On the hottest day of the year, 10 children in swimsuits tried to dodge the spurting geysers at the Town Square Children's Play Park.
Paul Cruise, 37, towered over the soaked crowd Wednesday afternoon.
He had kicked off his flip-flops and was chasing his 14-month-old daughter, Aaliyah, who gleefully slipped around the obstacle course formed by the jets of water.
"I'm getting more tired than she is," Cruise joked. "It gets pretty wild out here."
Cruise and his daughter were among the dozens of people who battled record-breaking heat by cooling off with their families at Town Square, near Las Vegas Boulevard and Sunset Road.
The day's high temperature reached 112 degrees, breaking multiple records as the mercury peaked.
Chris Stachelski, with the National Weather Service in Las Vegas, said Wednesday's temperature marked the hottest Aug. 24 ever for Las Vegas. It reached 112 degrees at the weather service's official marking station, McCarran International Airport, surpassing the previous record for the date of 110 degrees set on Aug. 24, 1985.
The National Weather Service has been keeping temperature records since 1937.
Wednesday's high also marked the hottest day of 2011, beating out the previous high of 111 degrees on July 2.
Stachelski said it's unusual for summer temperatures to peak in late August.
The hottest temperatures in the Las Vegas Valley typically are reached between late June and mid-July, he said.
Excessive heat watch warnings have been issued by the weather service through Friday.
Today's high is expected to reach 110 degrees, which would tie the Aug. 25 high set in 1985.
But temperatures soon will begin to decrease, Stachelski said.
Temperatures from Friday through the weekend are not expected to break any records, he said.
Friday's high is expected to reach 108 degrees. Saturday's and Sunday's highs are expected to be 106 degrees.
Stachelski said the reason for the soaring temperatures so late in the summer is a high-pressure system that developed earlier over Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
It gave those states unbearably hot summers and has now moved over the Las Vegas Valley.
Although Wednesday's temperatures sizzled, they didn't come close to the all-time high for the Las Vegas Valley of 117 degrees, set on July 24, 1942.
Kamila Perez was at the Town Square park sitting on a shaded bench. No one needed to tell her Wednesday was a record-setting scorcher.
"Oh, yeah," she said. "It's hot out here."
Perez took her 11-month-old son, Oliver, to the park.
The boy had no problem crawling around the geysers wearing nothing but a diaper.
Perez said she and her family often take refuge from the heat at the children's park, where adults are free to act like kids.
Perez pointed to her bare feet, noting they were just getting dry.
"We're just having fun," she said.
Contact reporter Antonio Planas at
aplanas@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638.
