A man wipes himself off as people cope with extreme heat along the National Mall in Washington, DC, on July 3. (Amid Farahi/AFP/Getty Images)

A Dust Bowl-era record fell further on Monday when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July ranked as the hottest month on record in the US since 1895. The Dust Bowl record-holder of July 1936 had already been beaten out by July of 2012 — now both have fallen.

July’s average temperature in the Lower 48 states was 3.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, NOAA reported. This was about a tenth to two-tenths of a degree warmer than both July 1936 and July 2012.

In other words, out of more than 1,500 months on record since 1895, July of this year stands out as number one.

There are two aspects of the record that are particularly interesting and worth exploring a little more deeply. The first is how this record was achieved, considering that average daytime maximum temperatures during July were only the sixth warmest for the month. The other is how NOAA announced the news.

The entire Lower 48 states were hotter than average during the month. Every state in the contiguous US was at least 1-degree above its 20th century average, NOAA found, with 13 states ranking among their five warmest Julys. That fact, plus record warm overnight temperatures and other variables helped break the monthly record. July featured prolonged and intense heat domes that resulted in record hot temperatures stretching from the East Coast to the Plains and Southwestern states.

Wyoming had its hottest month of any month on record, exceeding its previous July record by nearly a full degree, which is an unusually large margin for such a milestone to be set.

No state in the Lower 48 states had a monthly average temperature that was near or below average for the month, according to NOAA.

Rather than daytime maximum temperatures powering July into record territory, it was the pervasiveness of the heat from coast-to-coast, intensity of the heat in some areas such as the Intermountain West and most especially, record warm overnight minimum temperatures that pushed the average monthly temperature over the line.

Overnight low temperatures averaged a whopping 3.7 degrees above average for the month, ranking as the warmest month on record for average low temperatures, beating out July 2022 by 0.7 degrees. Typically, such longstanding records are exceeded by smaller margins.

Record warm overnight temperatures are a telltale sign of the influence of human-caused climate change. What’s more, when temperatures stay elevated overnight like they did in July, they can increase the lethality of heat waves since such conditions deprive people who lack access to cooling of the chance to rest before facing another hot day. Extreme heat is the number one weather-related killer in the US in a typical year, according to the National Weather Service.

People sit on stairs in Midtown Manhattan during a heatwave in New York City on July 3. (Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images)

NOAA didn’t make it easy for reporters and the public to notice this significant climate news. The federal agency posted the July data on the news page of the National Centers for Environmental Information, rather than NOAA’s own (far more highly trafficked) homepage, which had been routine with past monthly reports under previous administrations.

The agency also didn’t clearly headline the news, instead opting to include it within the innocuous-sounding news release, “Assessing the U.S. Temperature and Precipitation in July 2026.” The release itself was accompanied by a thumbnail photo of a horse grazing in a field, rather than an image that conjures up thoughts of heat waves, for example.

It was as if NOAA public affairs’ team was sending the message, “There is nothing to see here.”

This was not an accident, either. Anonymous sources told me earlier this year that NOAA took steps like these to downplay monthly climate reports, in order to still have them published at all. This was done in response to the White House’s hostile stance when it comes to mainstream climate science findings.

President Trump views human-caused global warming as a hoax, and the administration has taken other climate science reports offline, such as the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessments, while disbanding groups of scientists who were working on upcoming federal climate science reports.

Just yesterday, in fact, the administration pulled NOAA support for producing an annual report on how the Arctic is faring in a time of rapid climate change. Known as the Arctic Report Card, that peer-reviewed report had been published for the past 20 years, including in 2025 during the Trump administration.

So, the low-key rollout of the hottest month announcement needs to be seen in this context, as it’s possible a higher-profile news release or press conference could have scuttled the release of the data in the first place.

A thunderstorm crosses the Hudson River from Jersey City, NJ, into Lower Manhattan, seen from the 102nd-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building on August 07, 2026. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)