The United States just had its hottest summer in 132 years of recordkeeping, soundly beating the summer of 1936 — during the Dust Bowl era — as well as the summer of 2021, according to data released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Previously, those two years had tied for the hottest summer.
The Dust Bowl summer of 1936 has been long been regarded as the benchmark of hottest summers in the US, but has now been equaled or eclipsed twice in the past five years thanks to the influence of human-caused climate change. August 2026 and the June-through-August period both set all-time records, and July was the hottest month of any month on record in the US. The difference between the new and old seasonal records was 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit, which is relatively large for an all-time temperature record.
Summer featured widespread above-average temperatures across the Lower 48 states, with well-above-normal nighttime low temperatures throughout the country — largely driven by a series of powerful heat domes that affected nearly every state besides Alaska and Hawaii.
The average temperature during August in the Lower 48 states was 75.6 degrees Fahrenheit, which was 3.5 degrees above the 20th century average. The average for meteorological summer — from June through August — was 74.4 degrees, which was 3 degrees above average.
