Saguaro Nat Park Got So Hot Last Week Rangers Baked Cookies In a Car

Seems like with the worsening of climate change, we’re awash in terms for weather events that previously would have just been called “hot,” “cold,” or “wet.” For example, last week’s “heat dome” that sent temperatures soaring over the Southwest. That’s not a new meteorological term but it wasn’t one that was regularly on people’s lips. Now, with extreme heat and drought an apparent regularity, it is.

Anyway, that heat dome sent temps so high, rangers in Saguaro National Park, near Tucson, Arizona, showed just how hot the inside of a car can get on a scorcher by baking a tray of cookies on a car’s dashboard.

“When temperatures are around 100°F, it doesn’t take too long for the dashboard to get around 180+°F (with a dark dashboard, and locked windows).Cookies are fun and all, but this heat is no joke,” the rangers wrote.

There are all sorts of tricks to cooking food with your car, but usually those are based on wrapping stuff in foil and stashing it in your engine bay while driving. But literal baking in a car is a new one for us.

As always, never, ever leave animals or people in a car on a hot day, but do leave cookie dough if the dash is hot enough.