It was definitely a hot one in July. Less than two weeks ago, I wrote about how the Twin Cities saw its 6th-hottest July on record, and, as a whole, Minnesota saw its 5th-hottest July.
Well, now the numbers are crunched for the country. The contiguous United States (the lower 48 states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii for obvious climatological reasons) had its hottest month on record in 131 years. This beats out July 1936 and July 2012.
That is based on the average temperature across the 48 states, which is how we rank these things. The average temperature was 76.9 degrees F. That’s 3.3 degrees F above the modern normal (1991-2020 average)…