111 in the Shade
But its dry heat.
As a public service, Arizona is taking onto itself all the worldwide effects of global warming, thereby saving polar bears in Greenland and archipelago-living indigenous peoples. Once it gets over about 108 you don't really notice the difference anyway. Picture taken at 4:50PM MST today in the inappropriately-named (at least for today) Paradise Valley, AZ. For all those who want to compare this to hell, I would remind you that the core of Dante's hell was frozen and cold, not hot. Dante knew what he was talking about. It may be hot but there is nothing to shovel off my driveway.
By the way, when people laugh at Arizona for not observing Daylight Savings Time, this is why we don't. At nearly 5:00, we are hitting our peak temperature. If we observed DST, we would not be hitting this peak until 6:00. Temperatures here will cool over the next two hours by 20 degrees (its already fallen nearly 3 degrees in the 20 minutes since I took the picture, and the sun is not down yet). With this fast temperature drop typical of the desert combined with evening shade, it will be nice enough to be outside, eating or relaxing or watching a little league game by 7:00. If I had my druthers, I would observe reverse daylight time, going back rather than forward an hour in the spring. More observations on DST from myself and Virginia Postrel here.
