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Contiguous US Breaks Its Record For Hottest Month Ever, NOAA Says (apnews.com) 111

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The contiguous United States sizzled to its hottest month ever last month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. July averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit (24.94 degrees Celsius) across the Lower 48 states, eclipsing the Dust Bowl's July 1936 by an eighth of a degree. Records go back to 1895. [...] Although it was unusually cool in Alaska, hotter-than-normal conditions blanketed the Lower 48, with the most excessive heat in the Mountain West, Southwest, Northern Plains and Southeast. The heat was so widespread that every one of the Lower 48 states was at least 1 degree Fahrenheit (nearly 0.6 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average, said Russ Vose, chief of monitoring at NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information.

[...] The biggest driver of the record heat was nighttime lows that smashed the old mark for hottest minimums by 0.7 degrees, NOAA said. Hotter nights are a classic sign of human-caused climate change, according to scientists and several studies in peer-reviewed literature. NOAA's calculation is based on averaging 24 hours of temperature, not just highs or lows. "If you're talking heat waves, that nighttime low is incredibly important for determining total heat stress," [said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections]. "So if it doesn't cool off at night, your body doesn't have time to readjust to all the heat." As nighttime temperatures increase, more people die and lose sleep, studies show.

The years 2021 and 1936 tie for America's hottest summer, which is June through August. Through July, 2026 is a shade cooler than 2021, which was powered by record heat in June. Because of climate change, Masters said, "this may be one of the coolest years we're gonna experience for the rest of our lives." What's needed, Masters said, is "to stop burning so many fossil fuels. We also need to be spending money to adapt to the new climate that we've put in place."

Contiguous US Breaks Its Record For Hottest Month Ever, NOAA Says More | Reply

Contiguous US Breaks Its Record For Hottest Month Ever, NOAA Says

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  • NOAA will be defunded (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yanestra ( 526590 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @11:44PM (#66284900) Journal
    If the stable genius hears about that, it'll be the end of NOAA and maybe of climate itself.

    • Re:NOAA will be defunded (Score:5, Insightful)

      by T34L ( 10503334 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @11:47PM (#66284902)
      The anti-intellectualism will continue until prognosis improves.

    • Re:NOAA will be defunded (Score:4, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @11:56PM (#66284908)

      If the stable genius hears about that, it'll be the end of NOAA and maybe of climate itself.

      And that crowd ignores that the other Noah was involved in the biggest climate / sea-level change event in "history." :-)

      • And that crowd ignores that the other Noah was involved in the biggest climate / sea-level change event in "history." :-)

        Not to mention he was a stable genius, able to somehow collect and pack two of all the species on earth into a small (by modern standards) ship, then feed and transport them all around the world without mishap.

        • Not to mention he was a stable genius

          And he was a psychopath, as he watched is neighbors, friends, community members, babies, etc. drown rather than helping them up on his boat or trying to convince them to build their own boat.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            And he was a psychopath, as he watched is neighbors, friends, community members, babies, etc. drown rather than helping them up on his boat or trying to convince them to build their own boat.

            Nevermind how we are still around today because I don't recall two *humans* being on board, just Noah himself. The obvious reason for two of every animal, but Noah? (Plus, it turns out things like homosexuality exist in animals as well...)

            Nevermind that if we did that, we can ignore everything between Adam & Eve to

            • Nevermind how we are still around today because I don't recall two *humans* being on board, just Noah himself.

              Eight humans were on the ark (according to the book of Genesis): Noah, his wife (not named in the bible), his three sons, and their wives.

              • It’s all funny because genetic evidence exists for the breeding population sizes of any animal and humans never got below a few tens of thousands. We have multiple lines of direct proof that the genesis and flood stories are myth, but at the same time thats a relief because the myth is we are all inbreds.

          • Hey man, his boat just didn't "pop" into existence. Quite sure Noah and his cult would of been out there working on his "ark" and everyone that wasn't part of the cult likely laughed. They laughed until the flood showed up anyway. Shame we don't have any of that boat left. Would of been a great artifact.

            • They laughed until the flood showed up anyway

              And they laughed when the water was up to their ankles? To their knees? To their waists? An "ark" that size would not yet have been floating until the water was probably at least 15-20 feet (5 "cubits"?) deep, so people, neighbors, children, babies, etc. all would have had time to stand outside the ark and beg for their lives. All while Noah and all the animals and his 7 family members listened to the screams, smugly from on high. Yeah, he's a psychopath.

              To be honest, I don't know why the story is include

              • I suspect the people that put together Christianity were drawing on other myths. Many cultures have a flooding myth, and if you go back far enough in the ecological records you can find different flooding events happening in different areas and different time points.

                It's pretty common to create or draw parallels between your religion and the people you are trying to win over. The Roman's were great with absorbing cultures.

                I guess it works for some.

        • And that crowd ignores that the other Noah was involved in the biggest climate / sea-level change event in "history." :-)

          Not to mention he was a stable genius, able to somehow collect and pack two of all the species on earth into a small (by modern standards) ship, then feed and transport them all around the world without mishap.

          Obviously, Noah was a Timelord with a TARDIS.

      • I think much of Europe is wishing for Noah to be around right now.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The US is the hottest country on the planet! Our numbers are truly YUGE! You wouldn't believe it.

    • In some other countries, this kind of behavior from the head of state would spark a wave of revolutionary sentiment.
      In the U.S., everything goes through without much of a hitch. That's also alarming.

      • In Germany a president has been ousted for far less than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: NOAA will be defunded (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Fons_de_spons ( 1311177 ) on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @06:33AM (#66285168)
        The US is not known for moderation. But the same forces that have taken over there are present everywhere. The good knews? Everyone can now see that leaders like Trump are not the solution. That spoils the extreme right party a bit here. But they are getting stronger every year. This is not over.

        • The good knews? Everyone can now see that leaders like Trump are not the solution.

          Define "everyone". A significant portion of the world believes nationalism while excusing corruption is still the way to go. Australia currently has the redhead racist rising in polls, the same who just ... accepted a gift of a plane from a fossil fuels industry executive. In Europe nationalism is on the rise, there are again calls from some countries to leave the EU despite all evidence showing that literally nothing good happened as a result.

          Not everyone can see. A significant portion of the electorate is

      • In some other countries, this kind of behavior from the head of state would spark a wave of revolutionary sentiment.

        In the U.S., everything goes through without much of a hitch. That's also alarming.

        That is because the one entity that could put a stop to it (Congress) is declining to do anything about it due to the GOP's current control of it and their undying fealty to the orange god-emperor. If the Democrats take control after the midterms (which is looking very likely) that will change - bigly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      He just needs to put tariffs on hot weather and it will stay away! Right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      you can't trust anything coming from NOAA, they have been so defunded that they are unable to do any weather stuff...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by smithmc ( 451373 )
      Pretend this is all caps: "I didn't know there was so many dumocrats at the NOAA! It will be shut down immediately to MAKE AMERICA HOT AGAIN! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!!" [eyeroll]
    • "NOAA" sounds like a Biblical character, the kind that would build an ark to save the believers when the global deluge hits. So it should be right up the MAGA alley. Then again, how would the deluge come about if you don't believe in global warming?

  • Trump threatens the NOAA (Score:4, Informative)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @11:50PM (#66284904) Homepage

    Trump is cutting the NOAA budget [ucs.org] -- the organisation that it important as it monitors the weather. The orange despot does not like those who produce facts that contradict his lies.

  • Now that just doesn't seem fair.

  • Why? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Art Challenor ( 2621733 ) on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @12:51AM (#66284954)
    Why do we still have NOAA and the NWS when I can get the weather on my phone? It even has tornado and hurricane warnings!!

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @02:08AM (#66284998) Journal

      This should be modded funny, not troll. (Missing a sarcasm tag?)

      Saying we don't need NOAA or the NWS because I can see the weather on my phone, is like saying we don't need farmers because I can just go to the grocery store. -- meterorologist Tony Pann, on X, dated Mar 4, 2025.

      • We should be horrified that a meteorologist would even need to clarify that, but one of the recent US presidents made pretty much that argument for reducing funding for the NWS, so we're way beyond that. That I don't recall which, also suggests that I, at least, could imagine it coming from the mouths of a number of them.

        • Maybe this will help:

          - Ronald Reagan targeted the NWS in a campaign to reduce non-military spending. He proposed closing stations, slashing budgets, and privatizing weather satellites. Congress pushed back on some of this.

          - George W. Bush signed legislation that defunded the Climate Reference Network, which contained weather stations operated by the NOAA, the parent organization to the NWS.

          - Bill Clinton forced NOAA and NWS managers to work with much tighter budgets, as part of his "reinvent government" ini

          • Also, it occurs to me to wonder why you're worried about farmers. We'd still have chips and ramen and all the packaged goods - right? I'm also with the "80 percent support a mandatory label for food containing DNA". Just so long as someone's keeping brown cows - I like chocolate milk. (OK, I'm done. It's depressing to look up these statistics)...

        • Hey man, he can control storms with a Sharpie!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      you are fired.

  • NOAA is to be dismantled: do not trust (Score:4, Insightful)

    by aglider ( 2435074 ) on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @12:53AM (#66284958) Homepage

    There will be 2x presidential decrees.

    One to dismantle NOAA and one to Make America Cool Again.

  • Records only go back to 1895? Why is that? Is that because 1894 was even hotter? Concerned citizens want to know. Wake up sheeple, there's no such thing as climate! /s

    Anyway jokes aside I'm glad this was the "hottest ever". It stops the number of morons who say "but it was hotter that one month 47 years ago and therefore climate change isn't real" and significantly reduces the amount I want to punch people in the face on any given day.

    • So long as fossil fuels make up the backbone of both our energy markets but also our transportation markets, we're going to be producing a positive amount of co2 and other warming compounds. We are still shipping stuff around the world but diesel ships. I don't see this changing any time soon either. A lot of us still eat a lot of meat as well. I'm guilty as charged and while I've cut back on certain types, it's partially because of cost but also because of trying to be overall healthier. Meat is way to yum

      • Oh absolutely. But it's one thing to take a fatalist view of humans to solve our own problems (I'm of this view as well, we are fucked), and quite another to deny that climate change is happening (for that I am an advocate of changing the law to make punching people who say this in the face legal).

      • In the end, every such train of thought will always circle back to the undeniable conclusion of "too many damn people on the planet."

  • Contagious (Score:5, Funny)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @05:29AM (#66285128)
    I read "the Contagious United States". I suppose that would be true as well.

  • Troubling (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 )
    ...but luckily climate change is a hoax so this is most likely perpetrated by paid liberal agitators.

    Trump will send ICE they, will sort this out. By the time they are done anyone reporting liberal agitators information will be gone.

  • I will believe you are serious ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @07:25AM (#66285202) Journal
    ... when we have a Manhattan Project for going full nuclear, and for scrubbing carbon. Until then, it's just a bunch of argle fargle.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by east coast ( 590680 )
      I'll believe they're serious when they start living the lifestyles they claim we'll need to curve the trend. Tons of posts about Trump but none about the supposed environmentalists who are still living the same lifestyles of the average Trump supporter. Where is the low-hanging fruit? Why aren't these people changing their ways? Why ask those who oppose your agenda when your own "believers" can't be bothered?

      If these people were serious we'd see EV adaption in the double digits and be able to walk into any

      • "environmentalism is only an issue when it comes down to politics and not lifestyle in the minds of these people"

        1% of humans are responsible for so much GHG production that the lifestyle changes you're suggesting in 99% of the population make no difference.
        We could all say we're not going to work today because the office is made from concrete and steel, and the train burns diesel and runs on steel rails that were made in a coal-fired blast furnace, and the AI we're forced to use is not sustainable and uses

      • But you participate in society! I am very intelligent! Etc etc

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        I'll believe they're serious when they start living the lifestyles they claim we'll need to curve the trend.

        Which NOAA scientists are you referring to with the word "they"?

        • You know, "They" that drive a gas powered SUV, live in a McMansion home, still eat meat, and still air travel around the globe. We of course call that being part of modern society, but all that is very damaging to the biosphere because we did not require, and still don't, that our corporations stop treating the environment as an externality. We should also refuse trade with any country that also won't meet that same standard.

          No single rain drop thinks it's to blame for the flood.

    • We would have fixed this with wind and solar already if the money holders didn't think nuclear was going to solve these problems any day now.

    • Actual serious people understand that we need to solve problems now, not release a shitton of carbon building things that will start solving problems in 20 years, break even in 30 years, assuming they even still run and aren't already shutdown due to extreme weather (like 5 nuclear power plants are currently in Europe).

  • It is quickly becoming clear to advanced geniuses everywhere that the only way to stop this is to pay even more billions to even more foreign companies to get them to STOP BUILDING THOSE DAMN WINDMILLS.

    • Yeah he paid billions to shut down a wind project in my area in California. PGE has made it quite clear they will not bring in more power, and right now you can't get anything permitted here that requires new service because there isn't any to go around. Since California let PGE kill net metering (fuck you Gavin) we won't be getting the power from anywhere else either. The local descendant of the Confederacy yokels are celebrating because they didn't want the wind turbines to ruin their view.

  • This is literally the first time I have ever seen a /. article on climate change when no AGW skeptics have comments modded +1 or higher. Guess the writing is finally on the wall even for the dead-enders.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

      Its still early. They're watching Fox News for the daily marching orders and talking point. As a matter of fact let's check on what Fox is talking about today.

      Chuck Schumer!

    • Every post but yours is political slop - they don't care that the topic is about the weather or where it is going.

      Slashdot is end stage political dumpster fire.

      • Every post but yours is political slop - they don't care that the topic is about the weather or where it is going.

        Slashdot is end stage political dumpster fire.

        It's not fair to blame /. or any other forum where smart people hang out and the same shift happened. It's not a stage in their life, it's a phase we're all going through.

        It will continue for as long as the anti-intellectual populism that is causing it continues, and it will carry over to anything that might replace /. You know why the topic of the weather is polarized, but if you need it spelled out, pass the black sharpie. At this point it's physics, reverse the anti-intellectualism and you'll depolarize

      • Humanity is in the end stage atmospheric we're fucked fire... And the amount of fire is increasing.

        If some people didn't spend political effort to make sure of that then this wouldn't be an issue.

        Slashdot has ALWAYS been a place where we discussed politics. Cry harder.

        • Some discussion sure, but that is all that's left here. Hence it is end-stage for a nearly dead forum.

          I am crying, I shed a tear for Slashdot and what it once was.

          • It's partly end stage for a nearly dead country that causes us to have to talk about politics now.

            But it's also partly because we didn't take politics seriously, and get involved enough in it. If we had discussed it a lot more sooner, maybe we wouldn't have to discuss it so much now.

      • Slashdot is merely a reflection of societal discourse in modern day America. We're quite polarized these days and politics tends to seep into more areas then it should. Since taking care of the environment some how became political (sigh, wtf), we now fight over it.

        Worse, since it's become political, there is big money involved and people that really don't give a fuck are more then happy to exploit the situation to enrich themselves.

  • In 1936, global warming wasn't invented yet.

  • Nothing gonna change (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Wolfrider ( 856 )

    Planet gonna keep getting hotter bc politicians don't have the political will to actively try fixing things

    Europeans will (finally) install AC

    People will keep getting sick and dying from the heat

    People will relocate to try and escape from the heat

    Eventually we will implement the Mexican mid-day Siesta due to the heat

    After that we will be forced to convert everything to night-shift and become a night-based society starting an hour before sundown, bc nothing can be done anymore in the sunlight

    Planet keeps get

  • Hotter nights (Score:5, Informative)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @12:41PM (#66285634) Journal

    I live in a "high desert" region, in the mountains in northern Utah. Years ago I built a really nifty semi-passive cooling system for my house, which relies on the fact that even though the days get quite hot in the summer (~100F), as soon as the sun goes down the temperature drops, generally down to the low 60s, sometimes the low 50s or even 40s. Or at least it used to.

    When I had to replace my HVAC system 10 years ago, I had the installers add an extra 8-inch vent pipe to the roof that comes down into the HVAC room and connects into the air return. Into this pipe I inserted an inline electrically-controlled baffle. I also installed a high-volume fan, the type used in greenhouses for plant ventilation, in the ceiling of my laundry room. It pushes air from the house into the attic, creating negative pressure in the house. When I open the baffle on the roof vent and turn on the HVAC fan and the attic fan, the effect is to draw air from the roof (from outside) and to push it through the HVAC system to my entire house, and to draw hot air near the ceiling and push it up into the attic (which is well-ventilated to the outdoors).

    I then designed and built a set of ESP32-based microcontrollers, one each to control the vent baffle, the attic fan and a thermocouple that is installed in the roof vent, near the top, and I wrote some software that runs on an RPi and talks to the microcontrollers (via Wifi) and my smart thermostat (via its API). During summer nights, whenever the exterior temperature falls below the interior temperature and the weather forecast says the next day will be over 70F, the RPi turns on the fans and opens the baffle, drawing cool air into the house all night long.

    In past years, most mornings I woke up to a house temperature in the mid-60s, and not just the air temperature; most of the house's thermal mass, especially that large amount of ceramic tile on the floors, had cooled to that level. Outside temperatures typically reach 80F by 10 AM, 90F by noon and 100F by midafternoon, but when the house starts at 65F in the morning, it typically takes until 4PM to reach 75F, at which point the AC has to begin working to maintain that temperature. The AC has to work a bit (not much) until maybe 9 PM when the exterior temperature falls. So vast majority of my summer cooling is done by running a couple of fans at night. If we were willing to accept 80F in the house, the AC might often not be needed at all.

    Not this year.

    This year, nighttime temperatures rarely fall below 70F. My system rarely kicks the fans on until about 4 AM, and even then there isn't much cooling going on because the temperature differential isn't large enough... and even when the house does cool a bit, it only cools the air. It's not cold enough long enough to significantly cool the tile and other thermal mass components. My AC sometimes runs during the night, consistently starts running by 10 AM and runs off and on all day, every day. I've adjusted the thermostat to 78F and I'm considering going to 80F, though I probably won't because my wife would complain.

    Also, half of my state is on fire. Last night I disabled the system because there's a 15,000-acre wildfire 10 miles from my house, and if the system ran it would have pumped smoke into the house.

    Of course, all of this is ultimately only an inconvenience to me. I can afford to run the AC all day every day if I have to. Not cooling down at night is a real problem for those who don't have the resources I do.

  • The question is whether this is just a result of spreading urbanization, which puts more weather stations into urban heat domes, or is a real effect. That would require a careful look at the data sources, as well as how much was satellite data, and to what extent the satellite data was unavailable due to cloud cover.

    For the people inside the urban heat domes, it is real enough, but not necessarily any indication of climate.

    • Look carefully at this data source: https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/c... [noaa.gov]

    • It's not 'the' question. It's barely 'a' question. It's just been a popular one that has been seeded over every social media site for the last few years by multiple anonymous accounts - wonder who has been paying for that?

      It's insulting to think that people who work day-to-day with climate data haven't thought of and accounted for that effect. We've got global, daily, satellite-based monitoring of both land and ocean surface temperatures. We can detect the local environment component of temperature change a

  • Seems to me like same folks who shut down San Onofre nuke plant and others like it are now complaining about the consequences of their actions and of course are attempting to shift blame to anyone but themselves.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgood ( 139443 )

      Seems to me like same folks who shut down San Onofre nuke plant and others like it are now complaining about the consequences of their actions and of course are attempting to shift blame to anyone but themselves.

      San Onofre was shutdown because Edison botched the last major maintenance of the steam tubes and they started wearing out just a couple of years later. It would've been hugely expensive to fix it so they just shut it down instead.

  • What the article ' forgot ' to mention is the fact we have a Super El Nino weather event sitting off the West Coast of the United
    States which has a tendency to disrupt normal climate patterns. No, they're not new due to ' climate change '.

    Straight from Wikipedia:

    " A super El Niño happens when Pacific sea surface temperatures rise by 2C or more, and it strongly changes global weather.
    It can bring widespread flooding and drought, extreme or unseasonable temperatures, crop failures and food shortages, di

    • A super El Niño happens when Pacific sea surface temperatures rise by 2C or more

      And how frequently is that expected to happen? :)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Bumbul ( 7920730 )

      What the article ' forgot ' to mention is the fact we have a Super El Nino weather event sitting off the West Coast of the United States which has a tendency to disrupt normal climate patterns. No, they're not new due to ' climate change '.

      I'll just leave this chart here for you to study: El Nino trend [bbci.co.uk]

  • ...but the coolest we're ever be again." Folks don't react to front of this phrase, but they consider the end of the phrase and sometimes understand the severity. The trend has no responsibility to stop at any habitable limit.
  • I have created a climate radial chart [climateradial.com] to try to get a grip on long-term climate patterns.

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