Death Valley's Average Temperature In July Was 107.4 — A New Record

So what’s hotter than hot? Hottest.

Temperature records tumbled last month in California’s Death Valley, already famous for its blistering heat.

In July, the average monthly temperature in this swath of below-sea-level desert reached 107.4 degrees, breaking the record of 107.2 set in 1917, according to the National Weather Service office in Las Vegas.

July was also the hottest month ever recorded in Death Valley.

Andy Gorelow, a meteorologist at the NWS Las Vegas Weather Forecast Office, told HuffPost that, while July saw fairly high maximum temperatures during the day, the average monthly temperature record was driven by sweltering overnight heat, the result of an active monsoon that has brought a lot of cloud cover to the region.

The average maximum temperature last month was 119.6 degrees — the 11th highest on record for the month of July, according to Gorelow. The average minimum temperature, however, was 95.1 degrees, which toppled the previous record by 1.2 degrees, he said.

The lowest temperature last month in Death Valley was 89 degrees, recorded on both July 5 and July 25. On three separate nights, the temperature never dipped below 102 degrees.

The highest daytime temperature was 127 degrees on July 7, and there were 17 days last month that the maximum temperature exceeded 120 degrees.

Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center, said on Twitter that Death Valley’s average temperature last month appears to have come within 0.05 degree of breaking a world record. His tweets referred to the Global Historical Climatology Network, a database maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In June, the temperature in the Iranian city of Ahvaz soared to a scorching 129 degrees, a record high for the Middle Eastern country and among the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth.

Climate scientists warn that extreme heat will continue to worsen as human activity drives global climate change. In January, NASA and NOAA confirmed 2016 as the hottest year on record, marking the third consecutive year of record-high global temperatures.