Entrepreneur.com: Phoenix Has Hit 110 Degrees for a Month, But This One Invention Is Cooling Things Down a Tad

For the Arizona city amid a record-breaking heat wave, cool surfaces bring a modicum of relief.

Phoenix is writhing.

For the past 31 days, temperatures in the desert city have reached or exceeded 110 degrees, sizzling the previous record of 18 days set in June 1974.

The historic heatwave blasted the Southwest in late June, stretching from Texas into California’s desert. But it’s been the city of Phoenix that’s felt it the worse.

The heat is taxing hospitals, the city’s infrastructure, and residents’ patience.

“It’s wearing on people,” Kevin Conboy, a physician assistant with Circle the City told the New York Times. “Everyone’s temperatures are hovering at 100. Everyone is complaining of feeling so fatigued and tired.”

But some parts of the city aren’t getting so hot, thanks partly to a new cool pavement technology designed to reflect the sun’s rays back into the atmosphere rather than absorb the heat as dark asphalt does.

The city has painted over 100 miles of road with this coating material, according to the city’s website. City officials said cool pavements “had an average surface temperature 10.5 to 12 degrees lower than traditional asphalt at noon and during the afternoon hours.”

The website also says that the nighttime air temperatures over cool pavement are half a degree lower than on non-coated surfaces.