A scorching Las Vegas hits record high for 2nd straight day
The Las Vegas Valley set a new record high daily temperature on Friday, but cooler weather is on the way.
A day after setting a record high, Las Vegas officially hit 96 degrees on Friday at the Las Vegas airport, according to the National Weather Service. It breaks the previous record of 93 degrees for April 11 set in 2023 and is 17 degrees warmer than the normal high temperature for this time of year.
Ashley Nickerson, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Las Vegas field office, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday the unseasonably warm temperature could be attributed to several factors.
“We have an area of high pressure staying over us, and when we have high pressure that means we’ll have a warmer air mass or warmer temperatures,” Nickerson said. “There’s lots of sunshine today, which has allowed it to really heat up. Today should be the strongest day of sunshine, and with the area of high pressure over us today, before it starts to weaken and move east over the weekend.”
Reaching the 90s is a taste of what is yet to come soon in the Las Vegas Valley. Saturday’s high is expected to reach 92, with wind gusts reaching as high as 28 miles per hour, before dropping to an expected high of 88 degrees Sunday. Forecasts for early next week are also expected to be in the upper 80s.
Phoenix, located about 300 miles southeast of Las Vegas, also broke a daily high-temperature record for Friday after it reached 101 degrees as of 1:31 p.m. That breaks the record for the previous historical high of 99 degrees set in 2003. The weather service stated that since 1991, the average first occurrence of triple-digit temperatures for the Phoenix area isn’t until May 2.
Last summer was the hottest on record in Nevada, Arizona, and other states across the west as the region continues to grapple with a historic draught that many experts say is caused by climate change. Nickerson said while she only chronicles weather data, the weather service’s Climate Prediction Center forecasts the coming months will likely be warmer.
But even in spite of Friday’s record-breaking high, Nickerson said its too early to predict whether some hot weather in April will signal an even hotter overall summer this year.
“Just because today is hot and warmer than normal, does that mean we’re gonna have a hot summer? There’s no real correlation with that,” Nickerson said.
Contact Casey Harrison at charrison@reviewjournal.com. Follow @Casey_Harrison1 on X or @casey-harrison.bsky.social on Bluesky.
