Death Valley soars to 130 degrees, Earth’s highest temperature since 1931
There’s something puzzling about these “Earth’s highest”, as back in the 80’s near Lake Chad, it seems we used to see above 40 C often enough it was notable but not at all unusual, and sometimes hotter, 45 C or occasionally 50 C.  Past 50 C, the French and German thermometers didn’t have marks.<p>I had 125 F - 135 F in my memory.  These articles imply that’s not possible.  If a tree falls in the woods ... Or, rather, if the sun heats your day in Africa but nobody measures it, is it not hot?<p>In the surprisingly hot times, your home, at night, furniture was hot to the touch.  Weirdest thing, so used to objects indoors at night being cooler to touch.<p>Too hot to sleep, so a trick was to get in shower in a top sheet then get back to bed and hope to fall asleep before very fast evaporation stopped cooling.<p>Everything I’ve researched says I’m mistaken, it wasn’t that hot.  But then I wonder, how great are temperature records in obscure microclimates in Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa?<p>// Records or it didn’t happen.