These East Coast Cities Have the Hottest Mid-Summer Temperatures

July is the hottest month of the year globally, so no one is surprised when temperatures soar mid-summer. However, 2024 was record-breaking. According to NOAA’s 175-year record, July of 2024 was the hottest July ever documented. Additionally, the month marked the 14th consecutive month of record-breaking temperatures worldwide.

During the early part of July, millions of West Coast Americans were under heat advisories. However, this doesn’t mean the East Coast escaped the high temperatures. For example, New York experienced sweltering heat, despite the fact that the city’s average July temperature since 2000 has been a cool 77 degrees.

In the Tri-State area, temperatures reached the mid 90s in degrees Fahrenheit and even got close to 100 degrees inland. Heat indices soared even higher, into the 105-110 degrees range.

To determine the East Coast cities that experienced the worst heat waves during July of 2024 24/7 Wall St. reviewed county-level data on daily average temperature from the NOAA’s nClimGrid-Daily program. County seats were ranked based on the raw differential in average daily temperature from the period July 1-6, 1981-2010 to July 1-6, 2024. Only county seats with at least 10,000 residents were considered. Data on population is from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey.

It is important to emphasize that our list only considers the deviation from normal temperatures — how much hotter current temperatures were compared to historic normals. Also, the list only considers the week of July 1-6, and some records have been broken since.

Cities in six states comprise the list, with 32 of them in Georgia. Another nine are in Alabama, four are in Vermont, three in New Hampshire, and one each in New York state and Maine.

The smallest deviation from historic normal temperature among the 50 cities on the list was in Prattville, Alabama, where temperatures averaged 84.5 degrees in the first week of July, or 4.3 degrees hotter than normal. The largest deviation was in Carrollton, Georgia, where temperatures averaged 82.4 degrees but were 5.7 degrees hotter than normal for that week.

The largest city on the list is Atlanta, which ranks 15th. Temperatures in this metropolitan area, home to nearly half a million residents in the city proper alone, averaged 82.8 degrees during July 1 to July 6, or 5.3 degrees hotter than normal for that time. Athens, Georgia, and Portland, Maine, are the next largest cities experiencing considerably hotter temperatures than their normal.

As noted, this list is not about the highest temperatures reached but about the highest deviation from the norms. Indeed, all the cities in New England states and New York did not reach particularly high temperatures, but they deviated considerably from their historic averages. For example, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, temperatures averaged a much cooler 68.7 degrees during the first week of July, but that was 4.4 degrees hotter than normal for the city. Also 4.4 degrees hotter than normal were average temperatures in Ballston Spa, New York, which reached 72.5 degrees. These temps, though quite pleasant, were considerably hotter than historic norms of 68.2 degrees for the city.

Why This Matters

A hot wave, also known as a heatwave, occurs when temperatures soar significantly above the average for a prolonged period, often leading to health risks, power outages, and increased wildfire hazards

Climate change is causing extreme weather to worsen. Much of it is related to rising temperatures, as heat fuels several types of extreme weather. Scientists’ analysis found that certain extreme heat waves last year indeed could not have been possible without climate change. Extreme heat is the deadliest form of weather globally, and population exposure to staggering heat is increasing. One way to understand this is by looking at the deviation of current temperatures and normal historic temperatures.