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Call this a heat wave? Check out Kuwait

The town of Mitrabah might have set a record last week.

Philly set a record Monday for a July 25 with a high of 97, but that was a cold shower compared with what's been happing in parts of North Africa and the Middle East.

Mitrabah, Kuwait reported a high of 129.2 Fahrenheit on Wednesday, and that might well be a record for the Eastern Hemisphere.

The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization announced Tuesday that it would set up a committee to investigate the accuracy of the reading.

Verifying a temperatures is no simple matter, given that the location and quality of measurement sites can vary tremendously.

And these days, with so much attention drawn to the warming of the planet, integrity of measurement is a huge issue. WMO is the keeper of the official records of World Weather and Climate Extremes.

Jeff Masters, meteorologist with the Weather Underground, notes that back in 2010, the Kuwait station reported readings even higher than last week's but that the sensor was determined to be faulty.

In the latest case, the scientific Columbos will include meteorologists and climatologists, the WMO says.

If you want to amaze your friends and astound your relatives, you can find a list of those extremes here. (Yes, that "June 22" would be a mistake.)

The all-time record for high temperature on the Planet Earth is held by the appropriately named Furnace Creek, in beautiful Death Valley, Calif. – 134.1, on 10 July 1913.