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We just had the hottest August, hottest summer, and hottest year to date in U.S. history
We just had the hottest August, hottest summer, and hottest year to date in U.S. history. Originally published by Yale Climate Connections.
By Bob Henson · 2026-09-09T18:20:25.278Z
The 48 contiguous United States have just achieved an unhappy trifecta: the warmest August, warmest summer, and warmest calendar year to date in 131 years of national recordkeeping. Both the monthly and seasonal records were set by unusually big margins. The August climate report https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national climate 202608 from the National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, tells the story in grimly heated detail. As shown in Fig. 1, a large swath of the western U.S. – including every state across the Southwest, from California to Texas and Oklahoma, as well as Wyoming and Montana – is experiencing its warmest year on record. Averaged across all 48 states, 2026 has also brought the warmest March https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national climate 202603 and July https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national climate 202607?emc=edit nn 20260906&nl=the morning&segment id=226096 on record. More than a third of Americans got their warmest single March day https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national climate 202603 on record locally, and July was the warmest single month https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national climate 202607?emc=edit nn 20260906&nl=the morning&segment id=226096 in contiguous U.S. history. This year’s record smashing U.S. heat hasn’t occurred just at ground level. Temperatures above the 48 contiguous states through the lowest few miles of the atmosphere, called the lower troposphere, set records https://x.com/TheGlobalWarmer/status/2095138623293100277 for the warmest summer and the warmest year to date. The nation and world are in a dramatic transition year from a moderate La Niña event in 2025 26 to a likely record beating El Niño event for 2026 27. Precipitation across the 48 states reflects a mixed but dry leaning year to date. Few states were record dry or record wet for either August https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate at a glance/statewide/mapping/110/pcp/202608/1/rank , summer 2026 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate at a glance/statewide/mapping/110/pcp/202608/3/rank , or the year to date https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate at a glance/statewide/mapping/110/pcp/202608/8/rank , although recurrent rounds of showers and thunderstorms made it the wettest August on record for Indiana and Ohio. For the 48 states as a whole, the year to date through August has been the 13th driest https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate at a glance/statewide/mapping/110/pcp/202608/8/rank in 132 years of recordkeeping. The area averaged precipitation of 18.56 inches for the year so far is running more than 10% below the long term average. Get news for people who love the planet. Sign up for our newsletters for the latest weather updates, tips, and inspiring stories Will El Niño bring the drought relief the South and West desperately need? Sitting at just 26% and 21% of their respective capacities as of September 8, Lake Mead https://mead.uslakes.info/Level/ and Lake Powell https://powell.uslakes.info/Level/ have reached their lowest water levels since these reservoirs were built and filled in the late 20th century. Lake Mead and Lake Powell have fallen to their lowest combined levels on record, a grim milestone in the Colorado River's deepening crisis www.latimes.com/environment/… — Ian James @ianjames.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:molr3664kjz43t5gwwrac6vw?ref src=embed 2026 07 21T20:10:07.284Z https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:molr3664kjz43t5gwwrac6vw/post/3mr6mhzfpts23?ref src=embed The broader U.S. drought picture isn’t looking great either. As of its weekly report on September 1 https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DmData/DataTables.aspx , the U.S. Drought Monitor showed 79% of the contiguous U.S. in abnormally dry conditions and 59% in some form of drought. Both indexes are only a few percentage points short of their record high values of 88% and 65%, respectively, across the 26 years since the Drought Monitor debuted. El Niño winters typically bring wetter than average conditions https://www.weather.gov/fwd/teleconnections to the southern half of the contiguous United States. And the odds of this outcome get increasingly higher the stronger the El Niño event. So there’s real reason for hope that parched landscapes, rivers, and reservoirs in the Southwest U.S. will get much needed relief over the next few months – keeping in mind that any such relief won’t be enough to fix the longer term issues dogging water supply in this ever growing and ever warming region. An unwelcome surge in wildfire this summer Through September 8, a total of 53,665 U.S. wildfires had burned through 8,397,760 acres in 2026. Both statistics are the largest to date for any year since at least 2016 in online records https://www.nifc.gov/fire information/nfn from the National Interagency Fire Center. At a time when the National Weather Service and climate science are under attack, Yale Climate Connections meteorologists Jeff Masters and Bob Henson are sharing life saving news about extreme weather. Will you chip in to spread the word about heat? This year’s two largest wildfires to date are also the largest in the history of Nebraska the Morrill Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill Fire of mid to late March, which torched more than 640,000 acres and Oregon the Big Grass Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big Grass Fire of late July through early September, which has burned more than 578,000 acres, including parts of adjacent Idaho . Our research paper with @climate guy.bsky.social on the compounding effects of climate change and wildland–urban interface expansion on wildfire risk in California was recently featured in @grist.org's story on wildfire and suburban growth in the American West.Grist: grist.org/cities/west … — Mukesh Kumar @mukeshk.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:crmxtjj4blt5re5wxf7ak3q5?ref src=embed 2026 08 31T18:52:32.707Z https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:crmxtjj4blt5re5wxf7ak3q5/post/3muflb2e3hs24?ref src=embed The total U.S. acreage burned to date this year is about 30% above the 10 year average, as noted on September 8 in an in depth report by Grist magazine https://grist.org/extreme weather/america is losing its war against wildfire/ : “America is losing its war against wildfire.” As the subtitle puts it, “Wildland firefighting is increasingly facing an intractable reality: We’re stuck in a vicious cycle. A doom loop.” One sign of hope: on September 9, the National Interagency Coordination Center stated that continued “improving fire weather conditions across multiple geographic areas” had allowed it to lower its preparedness level to a three on a scale of one to five. The preparedness level had been at the highest Level 5 for 48 days ending on September 4, meaning that firefighting efforts had been severely strained. As of September 9, about 14,000 firefighters and support personnel were responding to wildfires, down about a factor of two from their mid August peak. Jeff Masters and Irene Sans contributed to this post. This city’s winters are disappearing fast https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/09/this citys winters are disappearing fast/ The next water crisis is beneath our feet https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/09/the next water crisis is beneath our feet/ After a flood, some manufactured home residents sometimes have nowhere safe to rebuild https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/09/after a flood some manufactured home residents sometimes have nowhere safe to rebuild/ Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Republish this article This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 International License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by nc nd/4.0/ . We love it when others republish our articles. Most of our content – other than images – is available to republish for free under a Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by nc nd/4.0/deed.en license CC BY NC ND 4.0 . Here’s what to do: by Bob Henson, Yale Climate Connections September 9, 2026 Bob Henson is a meteorologist and journalist based in Boulder, Colorado. He has written on weather and climate for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Weather Underground, and many freelance... More by Bob Henson https://yaleclimateconnections.org/author/bhenson/