How hot is too hot
for Phoenix?
Extreme heat is the deadliest weather in America — but the numbers hide in PDF reports nobody reads. So I doodled them. Same real data, easier to notice, follow, and remember.
The problem
In 2014, heat killed 61 people in one county.
That already sounds like a lot. Hold that number in your head — because the desert was just getting started.
What changed
A decade later, it was 645.
Heat deaths in Maricopa County climbed almost every single year — roughly a ten-fold rise — peaking at an all-time record of 645 in 2023. Each mark below is one year of the county's official count.
Source: Maricopa County Dept. of Public Health — Heat Surveillance reports. Reported years shown.
The turn
Then — for the first time in a decade — it fell.
2024 and 2025 both came in lower than the 2023 peak. Still historically high, but the curve finally bent — after the county poured money into cooling centers, overnight respite, and street outreach. Heat isn't just weather; it's a design problem, and design choices moved the number.
The takeaway
Numbers in a PDF don't move people. A doodle might.
This is the whole point of the series: take a serious dataset hiding in a government report, and redraw it so a person actually feels the story — 61 becomes 645 becomes "wait, what turned it around?" The data never changes. Only how easy it is to care does.