By State › Nevada

Nevada: Risks & Trends

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Same standard as every other page on this site: every figure below is independently sourced, and figures that vary across sources, or measure genuinely different things, are flagged as such rather than collapsed into one number that looks more precise than the underlying data actually supports.

Clark County heat deaths: rising fast while Phoenix’s fall

MetricFigure
2023 heat-related deaths 294
2024 heat-related deaths 526 (preliminary; historically these figures are later revised upward as investigations conclude)
Year-over-year increase ~78%
Days above 100°F, 2024 112, breaking the previous record of 100 days set in 1947
Peak temperature (July 7, 2024) 120°F
July 2024 average temperature vs. normal +6.7°F

A direct comparison worth making explicit

Clark County’s 526 reported 2024 heat deaths remain below Maricopa County, Arizona’s 602 for the same year, figures covered on Arizona’s page, but the two counties’ trajectories are moving in opposite directions: Maricopa’s toll fell from a record 645 in 2023 to 602 in 2024, while Clark County’s rose 78% over the same one-year span, from 294 to 526. If both trends continued, Las Vegas’s heat death toll could approach or exceed Phoenix’s within a few years, though that’s a projection, not a confirmed figure.

Reno-area earthquake probability: a standing risk

MetricFigure
50-year chance of a damaging M6+ earthquake within 30 mi of the Reno-Carson City-Tahoe corridor 60-75%
30-year chance of M6.7+ within 100 km of Reno ~30%
Largest credible earthquake, Mount Rose Fault Zone (8 km from downtown Reno) M7.0
Largest credible earthquake, Pyramid Lake Fault M7.5
Historical significant earthquakes 1860 Reno (M6.5); 1868/1869 Virginia City (M6.0/M6.4); 1887 Carson City (M6.5); 1914 Reno (M6.4); 2008 Reno (M5.1)

Reno sits within the Walker Lane Belt, a major tectonic shear zone accommodating 15-25% of the total relative movement between the Pacific and North American plates, which is why this specific corridor carries earthquake probability figures more typical of California than of the broader Great Basin region Nevada is usually associated with.

What these two have in common

Las Vegas’s heat risk and Reno’s earthquake risk are geographically opposite ends of the state and mechanically unrelated, but both illustrate the same point about Nevada specifically: its dominant public image, a dry desert state, undersells two genuinely severe risks that don’t fit that image, extreme urban heat mortality and significant seismic hazard.

Sources