Blog #5: Death Valley officially the hottest place ever. . . again

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9541972/Death-Valley-officially-the-hottest-place-ever.html

Death Valley officially the hottest place ever. . . again
by Balthasar Salazari

Death Valley has long been known as one of the most inarable and dangerous places on the planet - an interminable landscape of desert that easily dessicates the unprepared traveler. But did you know that Death Valley's propensity for extremes is not, in fact, ubiquitous?

In 1913, the hottest outdoor temperature ever recorded,134 degrees Fahrenheit, was observed at Death Valley. But DV's presence in the record books was tragically truncated in 1922 when an observer in El Aziza, Libya recorded a temperature of 136.4 degrees.

Wrenching, I know - especially to the staunch patriot. But maintain equanimity for a moment! Because recently, meteorologists investigating the claim discovered that the weather report in Aziza in 1922 was extremely frangible, replete with systematic errors and malfunctioning equipment. That temperature was anomalously high for the climate in that area of Libya, and the type of thermometers used back then were notoriously inaccurate. The observer may just have been a bit too zealous about getting his world record.

And so investigators declared a moratorium on misinformation and deemed the 90-year old record inaccurate, saying that it "just didn't match up." And so, with camaraderie and goodwill the world record was returned to its rightful owner, the American landmark Death Valley.

Balthasar: this is awful. Seriously. It's boring, it's uninteresting, it doesn't grab the reader, it's. . . what would you say? It's a litany. It wouldn't hurt you to use the vernacular once in a while. Rewrite it or you're fired.
-Autumn

Lugubrious much?
-Balthasar

Shut up.
-Autumn