Something Is Going On With The Climate

This post includes affiliate links. If you purchase anything through these affiliated links, 247wallst.com may earn a commission.

24/7 Wall St. Insights

• We used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey .
• The range of deviation from the historic normal temperature among the 50 cities is 4.6 degrees to 6.7 degrees.
• Also, 2 Dividend Legends to Hold Forever .

The average June temperature in the United States was 71.8°F, 3.4°F higher than the average, and it ranked as the second warmest summer in the 130-year-long record. Much of the country was expected to experience above-average temperatures, with drought conditions likely to continue in parts of the US.

This Summer's heat wave has been tied to at least 30 fatalities in the West. Overall, in 2023, 2,325 people died from heat-related causes; this was an increase over the previous two years, with 1,700 deaths in 2022 and 1,602 in 2021.

To determine the southern cities experiencing the worst heat waves right now, 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 16, 2024. Only county seats with at least 10,000 residents were considered. Population data is collected from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey .

It is important to emphasize that our list aims to find how much hotter it is in certain cities compared to their normal temperatures, so it considers the deviation from normal temperatures -- how much hotter current temperatures are compared to historic normals (rather than how high the temperatures are). Also, the list only considers the week of 1-6 July, and some records have been broken since.

The 50 cities on the list are in six states: 31 are in Georgia, seven are in Texas, five in Arizona, three each in Oklahoma and Alabama, and one in Louisiana.

The range of deviation from the historic normal temperature among the 50 cities is 4.6 degrees (in Durant, Oklahoma) to 6.7 degrees (in Yuma, Arizona). While this list is not necessarily about the hottest temperatures reached, all but one of the cities on the list averaged temperatures in the 80s, including three where temperatures were over 90 degrees Fahrenheit the first week of July. In Yuma, not only was the deviation the largest, but the average temperature was the hottest at 97.5 degrees.

The largest city on the list is Phoenix, which had the second-highest deviation from temperature normals. Over 1.6 million Americans in the city sweated under 96.3 degrees, or 6.1 hotter than normal. Following Phoenix, another Arizona city, Tucson, abnormally high temperatures affected the most people, with about half a million in the city proper. Atlanta, too, experienced much hotter weather than normal.

Climate change is worsening all kinds of extreme weather globally, but much of it is related to heat — as heat fuels other types of extreme weather. Scientists’ analysis found that certain extreme heat waves last year indeed could not have been possible without climate change. In addition to that, extreme heat is the deadliest form of weather globally, and the population's exposure to extreme heat is increasing. One way to understand how climate change is affecting us is by looking at the deviation of temperatures from normal historic temperatures.

“The Next NVIDIA” Could Change Your Life

If you missed out on NVIDIA’s historic run, your chance to see life-changing profits from AI isn’t over.

The 24/7 Wall Street Analyst who first called NVIDIA’s AI-fueled rise in 2009 just published a brand-new research report named “The Next NVIDIA.”

Click here to download your FREE copy.