With temperatures reaching 103 degrees Sunday, besting last year’s record of 102, people outside by choice or by necessity were trying to beat the heat.
Jose Millano, who is homeless, sat in the shade in Benedict Fountain Park.
“It does get pretty hard when you don’t have your own place,” he said, adding that he just returned from a visit to Chihuahua, Mexico, where he said it isn’t cool even in the shade. “Down there, it seems like it doesn’t bother anyone. They just go about it like it’s a normal day.”
Millano had to wait for the Denver Rescue Mission to open at 7 p.m. to get indoors.
Even some people who stayed inside could not beat the heat. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science lost power for two hours Saturday and was down part of the day Sunday.
And there were other scattered outages.
“It’s mostly small outages of one to seven customers,” said Xcel Energy spokeswoman Ethnie Groves. Groves could not provide a number for total outages in Denver.
At Curtis Park, children played in the wading pools and their parents stayed still in the shade.
Suzana Ramirez and her son spent the afternoon selling pork rinds with chile sauce, as well as snow cones.
“It’s not that bad – we are accustomed to it,” she said.
Across much of the Front Range, temperatures topped 100 degrees.
In the Denver area, temperatures should cool off later in the week and be closer to normal highs, according to the National Weather Service.
From coast to coast, temperatures soared into the upper 90s and higher Sunday, bringing out heat warnings.
The Weather Service issued excessive-heat warnings for Las Vegas, Chicago, St. Louis and Tulsa, Okla.
Even the mountain town of Fraser, which sits at 8,550 feet and likes to claim that it is the nation’s icebox, was in the upper 80s during the weekend.
“It’s not supposed to be hot like this,” said Connie Clayton, 58, a lifelong Fraser resident.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
