If you sat around at any point this year and wondered why it felt so much hotter than normal, it’s because it actually was. According to a new report from NOAA, summer 2026 is the hottest on record, beating out the prior holders of the crown, a tie between 2021 and 1936.
Per NOAA, the average temperature across the continental US was 75.6 degrees Fahrenheit, with daytime maximum temperatures averaging out at 88.6 degrees. Both of those are the warmest since the beginning of recorded temperatures in the US. Most of this extra heat was concentrated in the southern and western portions of the US, while the Midwest, Great Lakes region and northeastern areas all saw near or slightly above average temperatures.
Some areas have it worse than others. Arizona had its second-hottest summer on record, trailing only 2024. However, the desert state still experienced an average of 97 degrees, with 39 days with temperatures over 110 degrees and 121 days over 100 degrees. The state is expected to add to those totals heading into the last couple of weeks of September.
Alaska and Hawaii weren’t left out of the party. Both of those states experienced their third-warmest summers on record.
To add insult to injury, nearly 60% of the country is also in drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor. NOAA says that the Ohio Valley and parts of the Midwest had good rain but virtually everywhere else received less rain than average. Somewhat ironically, two years ago, the script was flipped, and both of those regions were in drought conditions.
“Persistent heat domes and drought conditions were key factors in the widespread above-average temperatures observed during 2026,” Karin Gleason, chief of the monitoring section at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, told CNET in an email. Gleason says that the jet stream, which is the strong wind in Earth’s atmosphere that functionally dictates the weather, was skewed toward high pressure in the US, trapping heat and causing extended heat domes. Pair that with drought conditions, which allowed “solar energy to heat the dry ground and air more efficiently,” and you have the ingredients for one hot summer.
The unseasonable warmth is going to continue
Summertime heat is often oppressive, but it’s not the only season this year that is slated to have warmer-than-average temperatures. NOAA released another report showing that 2026’s El Niño is strengthening, and is 90% likely to continue doing so into winter 2026 to 27. That means the US — and many other parts of the Northern Hemisphere — are in for an unseasonably warm autumn and winter.
El Niño is a normal weather pattern caused by warmer-than-average conditions in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean every two to seven years and can last up to 18 months. However, the current one began forming in June and has risen to the rank of “super” El Niño, a media-only name that NOAA doesn’t use, which indicates that this year’s El Niño is reaching historic levels.
It changes weather patterns all across the world, and is to blame for the uptick of hurricane threats in Hawaii, the lack of hurricane threats in the Atlantic, and higher-than-average temperatures for Americans across the country. Experts predict that El Niño is going to last until February 2027 at least, leading to a warmer winter, but also an increased chance of extreme weather, not unlike the winter storm that buried much of the US under up to a foot of snow in January. Warmer doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t be cold enough for snow.
And you’re paying for all of it
With temperatures reaching record highs, it’s no surprise that utility bills likely did too. Analysts warned that electricity demand could spike over the summer of 2026. Those increases definitely happened, as the US Energy Information Administration showed that fossil fuel prices were up virtually all summer, with the one hopeful stat being that solar, wind and hydroelectric power generation were up while fossil fuel usage was down compared to 2025.
Data about the actual impact to consumer bills isn’t out yet, but early estimates show that the nationwide average bill went up by 4%, with some areas reaching as high as 10%, including Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington DC. A few major cities saw a decline, but most places saw some sort of increase.
Read more: Our Exclusive Lab Tests Reveal Whether Portable or Window AC Units Work Better to Keep You Cool
Most of these costs aren’t coming from an increase in usage from everyday people in their homes. According to the EIA, homes used 1,500 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2025, which is up a small amount from the 1,400 TWh that residents used in 2005. That means people are using less than 10% more power today than they were back when Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani ruled FM radio stations.
By contrast, data centers used approximately 70 TWh in 2015. They more than doubled that number to 176 TWh in 2023 and are up to 448 TWh in 2025, with expectations that the number is going to increase to 980 TWh by 2030. That means data center energy usage went up by 272 TWh in just three years, versus 100 TWh in residential homes over 20 years. The amount of power used by data centers in 2026 is still unknown, but based on the frequency at which they’re being built, it’s hard to imagine that data center energy usage is going down.
The human cost is also rising. According to the World Health Organization, heat-related deaths worldwide have increased by 85% between the year 2000 and 2021, and a recent NPR investigation found that the number of deaths influenced by heat in the US is far higher than the official CDC figures. All of those data sources indicate that heat-related deaths are increasing in the face of global climate change, including approximately 35,000 excess deaths from Europe’s back-to-back heat waves during summer 2026.
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