The world’s highest temperatures were recorded in Iran on Sunday for a second day in a row amid a national shutdown which helped Energy Ministry authorities to prevent power cuts amid growing demand for cooling.

According to The Iran Project, Iran’s IRNA news agency cited data from weather information website Ogimet which showed that the Iranian city of Zabol, located near the country’s eastern border with Afghanistan, was the hottest city on earth on Sunday with a temperature of 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.28 degrees Fahrenheit)

The city of Tabas in eastern Iran recorded the second highest temperature among nearly 8,600 synoptic weather stations in the world at 48.6 Celsius, while the city of Omidiyeh, in southwest Iran, came 10th in the ranking with 47.5 Celsius, said the IRNA.

It said Tabas had experienced a temperature of 49 Celsius on Saturday to become the hottest city on Earth on that day.

Temperatures hit historic records of above 40 degrees Celsius in the Iranian capital Tehran and many other towns and cities around the country over the weekend, forcing authorities to declare Sunday, which is a working day in Iran, a holiday.

The nationwide shutdown came demand for cooling in the Iranian household and business sectors rose to record levels, pushing electricity consumption to all-time highs of nearly 80 gigawatts (GW).

National electricity company Tavanir said on Sunday that power consumption in Iran had increased by nearly 9% year on year this summer, exceeding the worst-case forecasts of the country’s Energy Ministry.

“Our pessimistic scenario had been an incre