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___FINDING RELIEF While air conditioners are cranked up and fans are blowing full blast, residents across the region are anxiously awaiting the start of the monsoon season, hoping it will help to keep the heat at bay. But so far, the summer thunderstorms — which usually bring cloud cover, lightning and downpours to the Southwestern desert — are absent due to the ongoing El Niño weather pattern, National Weather Service meteorologist Sam Meltzer said. “It looks like things are going to be abnormally dry over the next couple of months,” Meltzer said, noting that storms that might break the heat depend on wind patterns drawing moist air from the Gulf of California into Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get thunderstorm activity,” Meltzer said. “It just might be delayed.” Meltzer worked in Phoenix before transferring last winter to Las Vegas. He noted that while temperatures rose last month in the Phoenix area, June stayed abnormally cool in southern Nevada. The official daytime temperature at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas remained below 100 F (37.8 C) for a record 294 days before temperatures reached 102 F (38.9 C) on June 30. The previous record of 290 days, from 1964 to 1965, had stood for 58 years. Still, it’s not just the air temperature that people need to worry about, Vanos said. Humidity can make it more difficult for the body to produce sweat as a way to cool off. ___Associated Press writers Ken Ritter in Las Vegas and Walter Berry in Phoenix contributed to this report.
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