Getting Ready for the Hottest Days of Summer

Is the hottest day of summer on the Fourth of July or Labor Day in your town? Knowing your hottest summer day helps you anticipate when your electricity bill could spike as your air conditioning works harder to keep things cool indoors. But the hottest day isn’t the same everywhere around the country. Not even close, in fact.

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, analyzed temperatures from 1981 to 2010 to create a heat map of the United States that shows the surprising variability.

For residents of Tucson, Arizona, and Las Crusas, Texas, the hottest days of summer typically occur from June 16th through June 30th, when summer has just begun. At the other end of the spectrum, Nashville, Baton Rouge and San Antonio residents can expect to swelter two months later during the week of August 11. And in coastal Los Angeles and Eureka, California, residents experience their most blistering weather even later, the week of August 26.

Once you’ve found your town on NOAA’s map, you can start to anticipate and plan for the worst that summer has to throw at you.