Britons are among hundreds of tourists heading to Death Valley National Park in the United States, despite a harsh heatwave gripping the desolate region.
English, French, Spanish and Swiss tourists headed out on Monday to take photographs of the arid landscape, known as one of the hottest places on Earth.
Park officials urged visitors to stay safe, with park superintendent Mike Reynolds warning that “high heat like this can pose a real health threat.”
Dozens of places in the West and Pacific Northwest broke previous heat records over the weekend and are expected to continue doing so throughout the week.
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Record daily high temperatures in Oregon are suspected of causing at least four deaths in the Portland area.
More than 146 million people were under heat alerts Monday across the United States.
Temperatures are not expected to reach as high as they did during a similar heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, which killed about 600 people in Oregon, Washington and western Canada.
Officials warned that heat illnesses and injuries are cumulative and can accumulate over the course of one or several days.
In the eastern California desert, a high temperature of 53.3°C was recorded Saturday and Sunday in Death Valley National Park.
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A fried egg at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center in Death Valley. Photo: AP
Too hot for medical helicopters to fly safely
An unidentified visitor he died there on Saturday from heat exposure and another person was hospitalized, authorities said.
They were among six riders who rode through the Badwater Basin area in scorching weather, the park said in a statement. The other four were treated at the scene.
Emergency medical helicopters were unable to respond because planes generally cannot fly safely above 48.8°C, officials said.
One of the most extreme environments in the world.
Death Valley is considered one of the most extreme environments in the world: the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 56.67°C in July 1913 in the national park, although some experts dispute that measurement, saying the actual record was 54.4 °C, recorded there in July 2021.
It comes as global temperatures in June hit record levels for the 13th consecutive month and marked the 12th consecutive month the world was above the critical threshold of 1.5°C global warmingstated the European climate service Copernicus.
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