Heat in Pennington Co Plains, South Dakota

High pressure brought record heat to western South Dakota, with many locations setting all-time record high temperatures. The National Weather Service cooperative observer 8 miles north-northwest of Usta in Perkins County recorded a maximum temperature of 120 degrees on July 15th, which tied the previous all-time record high in South Dakota, first set on July 5th, 1936 in Gann Valley. A woman died of heat exhaustion while hiking in the Badlands National Park on July 16th.