Record hot Septembers in North Dakota, New Mexico signal broader warming trend

Tom Gallagher · 2026-09-04T00:20:08.339Z

North Dakota and New Mexico topping the charts on the same list says a lot about how widespread this pattern has become.

Record hot Septembers in North Dakota, New Mexico signal broader warming trend — Photo: Environmental Protection Agency, an agency of the U.S. federal government / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

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The articles collectively note that 2022 July was the continental United States’ third-hottest July on record and that the prior year’s July was the hottest worldwide, underscoring climate-change–driven heat trends. They describe Stacker’s project ranking the hottest Septembers in individual states—North Dakota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Louisiana—since 1895 using NOAA and National Centers for Environmental Information data, with rankings based on the highest average monthly temperature and including state highs, lows, and precipitation. The reports emphasize a long-running warming trend since 1880, averaging about 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, totaling roughly 2 degrees since then. Each state-focused ranking reveals how September heat records appear across diverse regions, illustrating the pervasive nature of extreme heat. Taken together, the articles highlight persistent heat extremes and the ongoing impact of rising temperatures on monthly records across multiple states. The sources for these regional rankings are compiled by Stacker from NOAA data and are linked in the respective articles.