San Francisco: Firefighters struggled to contain an exploding Northern California wildfire under blazing temperatures as another heatwave blanketed the West, prompting an excessive heat warning for inland and desert areas.
Death Valley in southeastern California’s Mojave Desert reached 53 Celsius on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service’s reading at Furnace Creek. The shockingly high temperature was actually lower than the previous day, when the location reached 54C.
If confirmed as accurate, the reading would be the hottest high recorded there since July 1913, when Furnace Creek desert hit 57C, considered the highest measured temperature on Earth.
About 483 kilometers northwest of the sizzling desert, the largest wildfire of the year in California was raging along the border with Nevada. The Beckwourth Complex Fire - a combination of two lightning-caused fires burning 72 kilometers north of Lake Tahoe - showed no sign of slowing its rush northeast from the Sierra Nevada forest region after doubling in size between Friday and Saturday.