Phoenix had the hottest month of any American city
- Parts of the United States experienced their hottest month on record in July.
- That includes Phoenix, which had the hottest month of any U.S. town or city with a population of at least 1,000 people.
- Dozens of other cities from Florida to Alaska also saw a record hot month.
- However, parts of the central United States experienced an average or colder than average July.
Phoenix, Arizona, had the hottest month of any American city on record, and is just one of more than a dozen cities to record its hottest month in July.
Phoenix’s average monthly July temperature of 102.7 degrees was the hottest for any town or city with a year-round population of 1,000 or more anywhere in North America, according to Weather.com weather historian Christopher Burt.
The previous record hot month for any American city was 102.2 degrees in July 1996 In Lake Havasu City, Arizona, according to Brian Bretschneider, an Alaska-based climate scientist.
(Current maps: Temperatures | Heat indicators | Dew points)
The average monthly temperature is calculated by taking the average of the highest and lowest temperatures for each day. By definition, taking the average smoothes out the highs and lows.
Now imagine that you are exposed to an average of 62 high and low temperatures per day, and you still come out with a temperature over 100 degrees.
It was their first month with an average temperature of over 100 degrees, which was 3 degrees hotter than the previous hottest month. This is an absolute record-breaker for monthly temperatures.
Phoenix has struggled through its long record 31-day streak of high temperatures over 110 degreesin addition to a record 16-day streak in which they failed to dip below 90 degrees.
Death Valley experienced its second hottest month in July 2023 (average monthly temperature 107.6 degrees), after July 2018 (108.1 degrees).
(more: The highest reliable temperatures ever measured on Earth)
Dozens of US cities also experienced their hottest month. This wasn’t just a Phoenix story.
More than two dozen cities in the United States experienced their hottest month in July this year.
Other Desert Southwest cities with the hottest month included Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Palm Springs and Tucson. The first monthly average temperature in El Paso, Texas, was above 90 degrees, which included a Record streak of more than 100 days That was three weeks longer than the previous record.
In the Southeast, fueled in part by very warm waters, at least six Florida cities experienced the hottest month. This included feet. Myers, Key West, Miami and Tampa. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and St. Simons Island, Georgia, also saw sweat during a record hot month.
While the most persistent scorching heat was in the south, there were a few northern locations that also made the list.
Caribou, Maine had its hottest month, and not necessarily because the high temperatures were off the charts. But it is Daily low temperatures were warmer than normal.
Finally, America’s northernmost city of Utqiagvik – formerly Barrow – Alaska, surpassed the warmest month in four years.
(more: Track US, European and global temperature records)
Cities that tied or set a new record for hottest month in July 2023. (Note: Only those cities with longer record periods are plotted.)
(Data: NOAA)
Other cities fell just short of the hottest month. From the northern Gulf Coast to Texas, eight other cities tied or set a new record for hot July, but came in just shy of the hottest month on record.
New Orleans tied the record for hottest July since 2016, but it wasn’t nearly as hot as it set in August 2011. Austin, Texas (site of Camp Mabry), has now had its hottest July in the past two years, but it’s still not that hot. ‘Not as hot as August 2011, there.
Other cities in this July’s hottest month, but not the month, included Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas; Brownsville, Texas; Corpus Christi, Texas; Victoria, Texas; Lake Charles, Louisiana; And Pensacola, Florida.
However, some in the United States had a rather cold July. While the extreme heat of the Southwest and South captured the most attention, a fairly large swath of the central section of the country had a fairly docile July, as far as heat was concerned.
Areas from the northern Rockies to the northern Plains and parts of the Midwest experienced an average or colder than average July.
This was because the soaring high-pressure dome responsible for the scorching heat remained camped over the southwestern United States, and other stubborn high-pressure domes were located near Greenland and the Canadian Arctic.
These low pressure “troughs” were forced out from central Canada into the central United States, creating occasional bouts of cold air.
Despite this, other massive heat waves around the world, both on land and in the oceans, set a new record for the hottest months on Earth dating back to the mid-19th century.
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Jonathan Erdmann is a senior meteorologist at Weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a near-encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. He studied physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then completed a master’s degree working with dual polarization radar and lightning data at Colorado State University. Extreme and strange weather are his favorite subjects. Contact him on x/twitter, Facebook And the threads.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment, and the importance of science in our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
