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While Ontario and Quebec have sweltered in temperatures past 30C, here's one town whose temperature may be hotter than any record outside of Death Valley.

Here's the town where it just hit 54 degrees


Daniel Martins
Digital Reporter

Saturday, July 23, 2016, 11:40 AM - While Ontario and Quebec have sweltered in temperatures past 30oC this week, that's nowhere close to the Kuwaiti town of Mitribah.

You'd expect a town in a desert country to be consistently hotter than Ontario, but Mitribah, and other parts of Kuwait and neighbouring Iraq, have struggled with extreme temperatures that, unofficially, rival Death Valley, California.

Death Valley's all-time high of 56.7oC has long stood as the world's hottest on record, but evidence suggests Mitribah came within a stone's throw of that mark on Thursday, with a daytime high of 54oC.

Other Gulf and Iraqi cities cracked the 50oC mark handily on Thursday, amid a massive heat wave that has gripped the region.

The heat in the region is so intense that it has led to major power cuts, as well as water shortages in some parts of Iraq. The Iraqi government shut its offices on Wednesday and Thursday in the face of the heat wave.

The southern Iraqi city of Basrah, meanwhile, had two straight days of broken heat records. 

Basrah posted Iraq's highest-ever recorded temperature of 53.4oC on Thursday, which was promptly broken the very next day, according to The Weather Underground, which says the city reached 53.9oC on Friday, just 0.1 degrees below Mitribah's scorcher.

The World Meteorological Organization says it will verify Mitribah's Thursday high. If that record holds up, it could be the new record for Asia and the Eastern Hemisphere.

In a blog post, the Weather Underground's Jeff Masters says a previous contender for that crown was Tirat Tsvi in present-day Israel, which reached 54oC in 1942. However, Masters says a 2012 investigation into the record cast doubt on its accuracy, though the Israeli Met Office stood by it.

SOURCES: BBC World | Weather Underground

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