Death Valley: A Beautiful but Dangerous Place

02 August 2011

Sand dunes in Death Valley National Park.

PHEOBE ZIMMERMAN: This is Phoebe Zimmerman.

STEVE EMBER: And this is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program Explorations. Today we visit one of America’s great national parks. It is a place of strange and silent beauty. As beautiful as this place is, its name provides evidence of very real danger. Come with us as we visit Death Valley.

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PHEOBE ZIMMERMAN: Death Valley is a land of beautiful yet dangerous extremes. There are mountains that reach more than three thousand meters into the sky. There is a place called Badwater that is the lowest area of land in the Western Hemisphere. If there were water there, it would be eighty-six meters below the level of the ocean.

Death Valley can be dangerously cold during the winter months. Storms in the mountains can produce sudden flooding on the floor of the Valley.

The air temperature during the summer has been as high as fifty-seven degrees Celsius. The sun can heat the ground so that the temperature of the rocks and soil can be as high as seventy-four degrees Celsius.

The extreme heat of Death Valley has killed people in the past. It will continue to kill those who do not honor this extreme climate. Death Valley does not forgive those who are not careful.

STEVE EMBER: Death Valley is a good example of the violence of nature. It contains evidence of several ancient volcanoes that caused huge explosions.