Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

LV a hot choice for good weather

Teresa Heredia of San Bernardino, Calif., could hardly ignore the heat as she traversed the UNLV campus Monday.

Temperatures in the Las Vegas Valley Sunday and Monday reached 109 degrees, tying a 57-year-old record for both dates.

National Weather Service forecasters say the temperature today could reach 108, which would fall two degrees short of the record for this date, also set in 1944.

A junior majoring in education, Heredia has lived in Las Vegas the past five months. Yes, she said, it was hot, although not unbearable.

Others aren't so sure.

Heredia and her husband visited San Diego about two weeks ago. "When we came back to Las Vegas, my husband said, 'We're not going to retire (in Las Vegas),' " she said while holding an armful of books in the shade of the five-story Classroom Complex Building.

The recent heat wave is a product of a high pressure system, which has settled over Southern Nevada, UNLV assistant geoscience professor Elizabeth Jacobson said Monday.

The high pressure system acts like a dome, restricting air flow, clearing the skies and, as a result, boosting the mercury, she said.

"We sort of sit here and bake," Jacobson said.

But that could be a good thing, according to the new Farmers' Almanac, which ranks Las Vegas as the nation's second best city in terms of weather. Yuma, Ariz., topped the list.

"Sounds like they kind of based it on sunny days," National Weather Service meteorologist Barry Pierce said of the almanac's list.

Exactly, say local tourism officials.

"If you're from Chicago or New York or another cold weather city, getting out of the sleet and gray days in the winter is very desirable," said Rob Powers, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

Las Vegas has more than 300 sunny days each year, which makes it a magnet for tourists seeking stress-free vacations.

"For one thing, weather delays in and out of McCarran (International Airport) are rare, and that's a factor in travel plans," Powers said. "And one of the reasons we're seeing an explosion of golf course construction is because people can play year-round, and people from cold weather climates go out of their way to schedule a golf course vacation in the winter months."

According to the 2002 edition of the almanac, which went on sale Monday, three of the nation's top weather cities are in Arizona.

The almanac ranked Phoenix third, followed by El Paso, Texas and Reno. Northern Arizona's Winslow was rated seventh behind Albuquerque, N.M. Bishop, Calif., and Bakersfield, also in California, rounded out the top 10.

The worst place for weather, the almanac says, is Quillayute, Wash., which is tied for the most cloudy days annually, has an average relative humidity of 83 percent and is second both in average rainfall (104.5) and rainy days (210).

Constrast that with Las Vegas' annual rainfall, about 4.25 inches.

Typically in late summer moist air from Mexico leads to the creation of afternoon thunderstorms -- the Mexican monsoon -- but this won't happen for at least the next few days, forecasters say.

"Usually the monsoon doesn't cut off until the second week of September," Pierce said. "This year hasn't been a classic monsoon year." Although thunderstorms rumbled over Southern Nevada the first week of July, the rains stayed east of Las Vegas, in northern Arizona and New Mexico, he said.

Despite the hot temperatures, Las Vegas didn't break the record for electricity use, said Nevada Power Co. spokeswoman Sonya Headen. The valley on July 2 used 4,412 megawatts of power, which led to rolling blackouts. On Monday residences and resorts used 4,152 megawatts, Headen said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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