Yes, Southern Nevada’s desert climate has always been hot enough to kill.

But until Ariel Choinard and her Nevada Heat Lab brought urban heat to the forefront of hard policy discussions, Las Vegas was behind other cities that were proactively preventing heat-related deaths and emergency room visits.

“It didn’t start being hot when the heat lab started our work,” said Choinard, the lab’s coordinator. “There’s a question of, what was our capacity and ability to start addressing this issue before it became so pressing? In some ways, we’re 10 to 15 years behind.”

In a matter of two years, Choinard, 42, has emerged as the face of the urban heat issue in Southern Nevada in local and national media.

She was named coordinator of the Nevada Heat Lab in 2023 when the Desert Research Institute le

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