Deadly Phoenix Sun Demands More Forceful Defense: Mark Gongloff

For most of the US, summer began after Memorial Day and ended somewhere around Labor Day. For Phoenix, Arizona, it began shortly after Easter and ended a couple of weeks before Halloween.

And it wasn’t just any summer: The city experienced a record-smashing 113 straight days with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 61 of those crossing 110F. The previous record was 76 days. Then, after a brief dip into the crisp high 90s in mid-September, temperatures soared past 100F again. Phoenix then suffered through 21 straight days of record highs stretching into mid-October. On Oct. 6, when many of us were ...