This Iranian city might have just suffered through the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth

The Iranian city of Ahvaz, home to 1.1 million people, might have tied the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth on Thursday, The Washington Post reports.

The hottest reliably measured temperatures on Earth were in Mitribah, Kuwait, on July 21, 2016, and Death Valley, California, on June 30, 2013, both reaching 129.2 degrees. The Weather Underground indicates Ahvaz reached 129.2 degrees twice on Thursday, at 4:51 p.m. and 5 p.m., although the temperature still needs to be officially verified by the World Meteorological Organization.

The Washington Post adds:

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Technically speaking, the highest temperature on record was 134 degrees on July 1, 1913, in Death Valley, but extreme weather historian Christopher Burt of the Weather Underground believes the measurement was inaccurate and "essentially not possible from a meteorological perspective." Read more about the blistering weather in Iran at The Washington Post.