Depends where they measure the 'official temperature' from.

In my city they measure the temperature at the airport which is quite a ways out from the city and is very windswept so it's often 1-4 degrees lower than what we experience during the day.

 

Since you linked to the hot even for Arizona article I just have to put in my two cents. The first is that the official temerature in Phoenix is also measured at the airport, the thermometer is shaded and it doesn't do justice to the actual temperature.

I actually live about an hour from metro Phoenix and the temperature at the front of the store where I work was 120 for a high. That was not in direct sunlight, but it was in a nook that took away the soothing 120 degree breeze.

I had to get on the roof to make sure our coolers were working properly and took a thermometer up there with me. The addition of the day-glow white roofing foam took the temperature to over 130, though I am not sure how much over as that was the highest marking on the thermometer.

The overnight lows are by far the worst though. The humidity climbs up as the evening comes (part of the monsoon cycle here), so with a low in the 90's and 55% humidity I think it would literally be impossible to sleep without the aid of air conditioning. Unless you were used to sleeping in an enormous puddle of sweat, oddly I doubt many people are.

But enough bitching about the heat. It's not like anyone put a gun to my head and forced me to move here. I will just patiently wait for winter to come, which usually happens for about two to three weeks in December. If you can call highs in the sixties and lows in the forties winter that is.

 

The town we live in is pretty small and uniform, in temperature, and the temperature on our back patio usually matches up within 1-3 degrees with the official, which is why it was odd that they were so different.

It was a different story in San Diego, where the official temp is taken at the airport, which is right on the bay and often 10-20 degrees cooler than in the inland valleys just 5-10 miles away. I've long though quite a bit of San Diego's reputation for cool weather came from temps at the beach, where about 1/50th of the population actually lives. It's ironic too, since quite often it's 90+ inland in the summer, and if you go to the beach it's 72 with a thick marine layer, and the pacific is like 69 degrees, which is actually pretty damn cold, if you're not swimming to keep warm.