Summer 2026 Was the Hottest in 132 Years of U.S. Records. It Beat the Dust Bowl by Four-Tenths of a Degree.

The contiguous United States just lived through the hottest summer since national record-keeping began in 1895, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this week, with an average temperature of 74.4 degrees Fahrenheit across June, July and August. That is 3.0 degrees above the 20th-century average and 0.4 degrees warmer than the previous record, a mark shared by the Dust Bowl summer of 1936 and the summer of 2021.

August did most of the damage. The month averaged 75.6 degrees across the Lower 48, the warmest August in NOAA's 132-year record and 3.5 degrees above normal. Average daytime highs reached 88.6 degrees nationwide, also a record. California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado each recorded their warmest August ever, and California and New Mexico set records for daytime maximums. Over the full summer, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah broke their statewide records outright while Arizona tied its previous high. Six Western states, from California to Colorado, posted their warmest summer nights on record, a pattern climate scientists have long flagged because high overnight lows deny the human body and the power grid any chance to recover.

The heat reached well beyond the desert Southwest. Nearly 50 daily record highs fell across the South in August, according to Fox Weather's tally of NOAA data. Dallas sat at 105 degrees for several consecutive days and Charleston, South Carolina, logged a heat index of 109. Phoenix hit 112 in July, Las Vegas 110 and Albuquerque 98. NOAA noted that the Midwest, Ohio Valley and Tennessee Valley saw near-average daytime highs, meaning the national record was driven by the West, the southern Plains, the southern Rockies and southern Florida, along with unusually warm nights almost everywhere.

The summer was also dry where it mattered most. National precipitation for June through August totaled 8.11 inches, 0.21 inch below the 20th-century average, but that figure hides sharp regional swings. California received just 0.20 inch, its fifth-driest summer on record and its driest since 2002. August's national total of 2.30 inches ranked in the driest third of the record and was the driest August since 2000, even as Indiana and Ohio recorded their wettest Augusts ever with roughly double their normal rain. Texas and Oklahoma got less than 30% of theirs.

The result is a drought footprint that expanded by more than 10 percentage points in a single month. As of September 1, 59.1% of the contiguous United States was in drought, spanning the interior West, the northern and southern Plains, the Upper Midwest, the Lower Mississippi Valley and the Deep South. More than three-quarters of Puerto Rico is in drought, with over 40% of the island classified as extreme. Alaska, tracked separately, had a warm August at 52.4 degrees, 2.9 degrees above normal, while Hawaii recorded its second-wettest August on record after Hurricane Lala dropped a peak of 43.54 inches of rain at Laupāhoehoe on the Big Island.

The record arrives one month after NOAA reported that July 2026 was the hottest single month ever measured in the Lower 48, at 76.9 degrees, and it caps a year in which heat has been the dominant weather story from Phoenix to the Carolinas. The 1936 record had stood for 85 years before 2021 tied it; it took five more for the country to pass it outright. With drought now covering nearly six in ten acres of the country heading into fall, the effects of the season will outlast it.