Extreme heat appears to have caused the death of a California man in Death Valley National Park on Monday morning, park officials said Wednesday.
The man's body was found around 10 a.m. by a maintenance worker who spotted a car off the side of the road with two flat tires, the National Park Service said in a statement.
The sedan had two flat tires but had not crashed, it said. The air conditioning did not work and the driver's window was down, suggesting it was not working when the man was driving, according to the agency.
"The initial investigation suggests that heat-related illness may have caused the driver to run off road," the park service said.
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Death Valley is one of the hottest places on Earth. The hottest temperature recorded on Earth was at Furnace Creek in Death Valley in 1913, at 134 degrees, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather & Climate Extremes Archive.
