NOAA Confirms the U.S. Just Had Its Hottest March Ever

Your mind was not playing tricks on you if it felt unusually hot this March. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just confirmed that it was the hottest March on record in the U.S. Here is a look back at the sizzler of the start to this spring.

Hottest March on Record Confirmed

It was a month for the record books. Over 12,000 daily high temperature records were shattered this past March. As a whole, the national temperature beat the record for the month. According to NOAA, 10 states saw their hottest March in 131 years.

How hot was it? NOAA said that the continental average temperature across the country in March was 50.85 degrees. This was a whopping 9.35 degrees over the 20th-century average. The month also marked the first time that any month's average eclipsed 9 degrees over the baseline.

The NOAA data dates back to 1895. March 2026 beat out the previous record warm March of 2012.

It is not surprising to learn that the continental U.S. average was so high this past month. March ushered in several heat waves across a large swath of the country. The NOAA report detailed that a total of 1,432 counties had never seen a warmer March. This accounted for 52.8% of the land mass in the continental U.S. and 38% of the population.

The peak of the heat wave hit between March 18 and 22. During this stretch, 4,447 daily record highs were set. Of that number, 2,010 were the highest March temperature ever on record for that location.

Zooming out to the entire month, there were 12,347 daily records and 2,596 monthly records set. Some weather stations set daily record highs on over 10 days. All of these records helped to push the overall March reading to its highest ever.

Some of the records set went back over 100 years, speaking to the rarity of this heat event. For example, the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, broke a record that had been in place for 157 years. The community of Winnemucca, Nevada, broke a record that had stood for 149 years. Not far behind, Fort McKavett, Texas, saw a 148-year-old record fall during the heat wave.