(ETH) – A thermometer at Death Valley’s Furnace Creek in the Southern California desert has just reached a truly breathtaking reading with temperatures reading 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 Celsius), which is being deemed the highest global temperature in more than a hundred years according to the U.S. National Weather Service.
“If verified, this will be the hottest temperature officially verified since July of 1913,” NWS Las Vegas, which owns the automated observation system, said of the reading on Sunday afternoon, emphasizing that it was preliminary.
According to the report from Reuters, the reading will undergo a formal review before the record is officially confirmed because of its significance, it said on its Twitter feed, linking to an NWS statement. The report went on to state that The National Weather Service’s automated weather station close to the Furnace Creek visitors’ center near the border with Nevada hit the extreme high at 3:41 pm local time.
Even at this extreme reading, it does not top Death Valley’s all-time record high, according to the World Meteorological Organization, which is 134°F (56.7°C) taken on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch. That reading still stands as the hottest ever recorded on the planet’s surface, according to the WMO.
