Record July Heat
Multiple U.S. States Report Hottest Julys Since 1895 Amid Climate Change Trends
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Key Points
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The state-specific ‘hottest Julys’ rankings for Wyoming, Wisconsin, Virginia, Vermont, and West Virginia go back to 1895, providing a long historical baseline for each state's July temperatures.
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In each article, the rankings are based on the highest average temperature for the month, meaning a state's ‘hottest July’ is determined by the month-average rather than just peak daily highs.
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These pieces appear on AOL as the distribution platform for Stacker's state-by-state July heat histories, indicating cross-platform publication of the same dataset.
In July 2022, the continental United States recorded its third-hottest July since 1895, according to NOAA. Twenty states logged one of their ten hottest Julys ever that month. The prior July — 2021 — had already been the hottest single month ever recorded on the entire planet.
The trend is not a coincidence. Earth's average temperature has risen roughly 0.14°F per decade since 1880 — about 2°F in total — according to NOAA. Nine of the ten hottest Julys in global history have occurred since 2005, according to AOL reporting on data from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
Ten States Just Had Their Hottest Julys on Record
AOL published state-by-state rankings of the hottest Julys on record for Wyoming, Wisconsin, Virginia, Vermont, West Virginia, Utah, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana, and Nevada. The data comes from NCEI, which has tracked state temperatures since 1895. That 128-year record gives scientists a long baseline to spot trends.
Each ranking is based on the average temperature for the whole month — not just a single scorching day. That method captures both blazing daytime highs and dangerously warm nights. It is considered a more reliable measure of long-term climate change than peak daily records.
Hot Nights Are the Hidden Danger Inside the Heat Data
While record daytime highs grab headlines, NOAA climatologist Karin Gleason says the bigger health threat is warm nights. July 2022 set a U.S. record for the highest average overnight low temperature ever measured. "When it comes to human health, animal health, crop health... what really seems to have the biggest impact is that the temperatures didn't cool off enough at night," Gleason said, according to NOAA.
When overnight temperatures stay high, the human body cannot recover from daytime heat stress. That drives up heat-related illness and death. A study in The Lancet Planetary Health confirmed that excessively hot nights carry a higher mortality risk than hot days alone.
July 2022 Heat Brought Drought, Floods, and Wildfires Together
The same stagnant high-pressure systems that baked the U.S. also set off a chain of disasters. By early August 2022, 51.4% of the contiguous U.S. was in severe to exceptional drought. Hot, dry air also supercharged wildfires — more than 5.7 million acres burned in July 2022 alone, nearly 1.5 times the historical average, according to NOAA.
When stalled weather fronts finally moved in, the parched land could not absorb the rain. Catastrophic flooding killed 37 people in eastern Kentucky in late July 2022. The average U.S. temperature that month was 76.4°F — 2.8°F above the 20th-century average, according to AOL.
State Records Stretch Back to 1895, But Recent Years Dominate
The NCEI records used by AOL and Stacker go back to 1895, giving each state a 128-year temperature history. For most of the 20th century, the hottest Julys in states like Vermont, Wyoming, and New Mexico clustered around drought eras like the 1930s Dust Bowl. That pattern is now changing fast.
Recent decades have pushed newer entries to the top of nearly every state's ranking. Earth has now recorded above-average global temperatures for 451 consecutive months, according to NOAA. Scientists say this makes record-breaking heat across multiple states in a single July far less surprising — and far more expected going forward.
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