July was just the hottest month on record in the contiguous U.S., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - and shows little signs of slowing down for August.
Fortunately, it appears temperatures will drop for many areas this week - but much of the southern U.S. will see dangerous heat before the end of August.
“Potentially record-breaking heat will grip the Southeast to south-central U.S. into next week, with heat indices reaching 105–115 degrees Fahrenheit and little nighttime relief,” NOAA’s National Weather Service warned.
August is typically not quite as hot as July, but meteorologists say the record sets up August for more extreme events. Some local records have already been broken.
“Wow - Pueblo just set its all-time hottest August temperature on record. 107 degrees at the Pueblo Airport so far,” Colorado meteorologist Chris Bianchi wrote on Bluesky. “That's also just two degrees shy of the all-time hottest temp there.”
It remains to be seen whether it could be the hottest August on record, too.
July averaged a temperature of 76.9 degrees Fahrenheit, which was the highest average temperature for the region since record keeping began in 1895.
That’s between 0.1-0.2 degrees warmer than the previous records set in July 2012 and July 1936, during the Dust Bowl.
Interestingly, daytime temperatures were only the sixth warmest. That meant America just wasn’t cooling down at night, NOAA explained.
“Daytime maximum temperatures averaged 89.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit above average, ranking as the sixth-warmest month on record for average high temperatures, while overnight minimum temperatures averaged 64.2 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.7 degrees Fahrenheit above average,” NOAA explained, “ranking as the warmest month on record for average low temperatures, surpassing July 2022 by 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Experts say human-caused climate change is to blame for record temperatures in July and throughout the year.
The fossil fuel industry’s greenhouse gases are continuing to warm the Earth’s atmosphere and are the largest contributor to global climate change. That is leading to the continued extinction of the world’s species, helping to form more damaging and frequent storms and leading to more extreme heat events.
“Extremely high temperatures across the continental U.S. this summer, along with intense drought and fire conditions, are absolutely consistent with the climate change signal,” Katharine Jacobs, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona, told The Associated Press.
But it’s not just climate change that is keeping us warm, the natural El Niño climate pattern is also a factor. El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation climate pattern, which helps to regulate weather around the world and typically leads to warmer summers.
Earth just transitioned into this phase over the summer, and the pattern is expected to strengthen to historic levels.
The El Niño helped contribute to the nation’s prolonged heat domes in July that led to dozens of deaths in New Jersey and around the country.
“We expect to set record global temperatures as long as carbon emissions continue to warm the planet, and typically these records are set during major El Niño events,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Guardian.
Europe also saw it’s hottest July, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
These updates come amid other unfortunate findings about the climate. A “state of the climate” report released by the American Meteorological Society examined last year’s extreme heat, finding that greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level and ocean heat content reached the highest levels on record in 2025.
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