Southwest closes in on hottest day ever recorded

Elvis impersonator Cristian Morales wipes sweat from his brow while posing for photos with tourists on the Las Vegas Strip, on Thursday, June 27.

Bryson Hubbard, 7, walks down a path leading to a sea cliff as his mother Vanessa Singer waits for him on a hot day in Santa Cruz, California, on June 27.

A couple bikes along the oceanfront in Santa Cruz on June 27.

Ashawn Rabb, 5, runs through a fountain at the Red Ridge Park in Las Vegas on June 27.

Beach-goers enjoy the surf at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz on June 27.

A surfer walks to the water at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz on June 27.

Betty Lu Guapo, 4, cools off at the Los Angeles Fountain on June 27.

A Salt Lake City fireman pours water over the head of fireman Cary Turner after battling a house fire on Wednesday, June 26. Temperatures in Utah are approaching record highs.

• Excessive heat warnings extend from northern California to Arizona and beyond


• It could reach 129 in Death Valley -- five degrees short of the all-time record


• Temperatures may not fall below 90 at night in some areas

(CNN) -- If you think a place called Furnace Creek would be hot in the summer, you're right. The town in California's Death Valley is expected to hit 128 degrees Saturday.

And the heat will stay on full blast through Tuesday, at least. At night, the mercury will drop to a refreshingly cool 96 degrees.

Fun aside, the heat wave scorching the Southwest is dangerous, as 170 concert goers found out Friday evening in Las Vegas, according to the fire department.

Ambulances plucked them out of 110 degree heat in an open air musical venue and drove them to a shady spot, where they could sit down and drink water.

Extreme heat taking toll on Utah

An additional 30 people were treated for heat ailments in local hospitals.

The temperature in Las Vegas hit 113 degrees Friday, just shy of the city's heat record of 115, CNN affiliate KLAS reported.

"I'm not worried as much about the people who have lived here a while," said Sgt. Troy Stirling, police spokesman in the Lake Havasu, Arizona, near the California state line.

"It's more the tourists coming into the area, even from Southern California, who aren't used to this kind of heat."

Civic and emergency officials throughout the Southwest say that if there was ever a time to worry, this would be it. The reason isn't just the oppressive heat that is plaguing the region: It's the fact it is expected to hang around, and possibly even get worse, over the next few days.

Extended heat warnings

Many of the excessive heat warnings issued by the National Weather Service extend through Tuesday night, with advisories from northern California, including Sacramento, all the way to southern Arizona. Forecasters say temperatures through the weekend could rival a 2005 heat wave that killed 17 people in the Las Vegas area.

The culprit is a high pressure dome that's blocking cooler air coming down from the Pacific Northwest, CNN meteorologist Indra Petersons said. That system won't begin to break up until early next week, she said.

As a result, Phoenix residents should see a high of 119 degrees on Saturday. It should max out at 113 in the coming days in Palm Springs, California.

It's not like sunset will provide much respite, as temperatures may not drop below 90 degrees in many places, even in the middle of the night.

The high temps come just a couple weeks before the 100th anniversary of what the National Weather Service calls the "highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth" -- 134 degrees on July 10, 1913, in Death Valley's Greenland Ranch.

CNN's Joe Sutton contributed to this report.

Source: southwest - Yahoo! News Search Results http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/29/us/southwest-heat/index.html