There were no mad dogs, just one foolish Englishman out in the midday sun as the temperature hit 115F.
And if I stand out here too long, among the kangaroo rats, chuckwallas and sidewinder rattlesnakes, Death Valley will claim a new victim.
This area of the northern Mojave Desert, encompassing the aptly named Furnace Creek, is on record as the hottest place on Earth.
Lucky for me that today it has a bit to go before surpassing its world record temperature of 134F, set in July 1913.
But that 108-year-old record is in danger of being broken as an unrelenting heatwave grips North America, already claiming hundreds of lives.
Many visitors here, including the ironically named Jamie Winters, are in little doubt that global warming is to blame.
Jamie, a 22-year-old English major, who was driving through the valley with her boyfriend, David Hermiston, says: “Even in our short lifetimes, it feels like we’ve seen tremendous changes. I remember as a kid having hot summers but not like what we are seeing now.”
Jamie, from Yuba City in California, 50 miles south of Paradise, a town destroyed by wildfires in 2018, says: “Seeing the devastation was heartbreaking. A friend’s uncle lost his home in the fires. He’s living in a trailer now.”
She says: “It makes you wonder what we must do to halt our destruction of the planet. When you ask people like my mom and dad, it’s frustrating as they don’t take it as seriously as us younger folk.
“I know people who deny climate change even exists. How dangerous is that?”
As we spoke, 1,130 miles to the north, in Canada, the second coldest country on the planet and the snowiest, a “heat dome” was engulfing British Columbia.
The province’s chief coroner, Lisa Lapointe, received reports of at least 486 “sudden and unexpected deaths” between last Friday and Wednesday this week. Normally, she said, about 165 people would die in the province over a five-day period.
South of the border, about 40 million Americans have endured triple-digit heat, and more than 50 million have been under excessive heat warnings.
Oregon and Washington states have sweltered in record temperatures. In Washington, state authorities have linked more than 20 deaths to the heat, but warned that number is likely to rise.
The death toll in Oregon alone reached 79, most in Multnomah County, which includes Portland, the Oregon state medical examiner said on Thursday.
The heat was so bad in Portland, the tram service had to be suspended as its infrastructure buckled and melted.
In Arizona, Phoenix has the worst smog since data was first recorded in 1980, and animals have burned their paws on blistering pavements.
In California, power companies, who have so far been able to keep the life-saving air conditioning on, have pleaded with people to conserve energy to avert a shutdown.
Workers are cutting down trees in the Golden State’s forests in the hope of avoiding a repeat of last year’s devastating wildfires, which killed more than 30 people.
Governor Gavin Newsom, who has committed more than half a billion dollars to the project this year, hopes to clear a million acres of woodland a year by 2025.
Environmental groups are divided on whether forest clearing is an effective measure for containing wildfires.
It could take decades before forests are effectively managed to stop wildfires and critics argue that more resources are needed to manage the state’s 33 million acres of woodland.
Steve Hawks, of the state’s fire agency, Cal Fire, said: “As soon as you cut it down, it starts to regrow. It is going to be a constant thing.” Elsewhere, 130 miles east of Furnace Creek, the largest reservoir in the US, Lake Mead, is at a historically low level.
It feeds the Hoover Dam turbines which provide nearby Las Vegas with electricity.
After years of drought, Nevada is expected to be under a federally declared water shortage next year.
The US Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dam, will make such a declaration if the lake, as projected, drops below 1,075 feet by the end of the year.
Environmentalists are clear the “apocalyptic” heatwave is being fuelled by our treatment of the planet.
Michael Wehner, climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said: “Climate change has caused rare heatwaves to be three to five degrees [Fahrenheit] warmer over most of the US. Other types of extreme weather are expected to become more severe as the climate warms.”
The United Nations calculated that storms, floods, and droughts, resulted in 15,000 deaths and economic losses of £123billion in 2020.
Humidity in California, and here in Nevada, has fallen 33% since 1950, making for an oven-like atmosphere. In Death Valley, a long, narrow basin almost 300 feet below sea level, the extreme temperatures are caused by its rock and soil, which radiate heat, which never escapes.
Ranch hand TJ Hillier, has worked the land around Death Valley since he was 12. Now 59, he says he has seen a change in the temperatures.
He says: “Out here it’s a stargazer’s paradise. We have some of the clearest skies in the world as pollution is so low. But I fear that’ll change. The way Las Vegas is growing, we’ll probably have casinos out here before long.
“They gamble on everything there. Let’s not gamble on our future.”
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