Every State's Hottest May on Record, Ranked

The Complete List: Hottest May Temperature in Every US State

Google this topic and you'll get BBC articles about UK May records. Nobody has compiled a comprehensive list of US state May temperature records — until now. We pulled these from the NOAA State Climate Extremes Committee records and cross-referenced with our 139M-record GHCN-D archive. States are ranked by their highest-ever May temperature.

Source: NOAA NCEI State Climate Extremes Committee (SCEC). May records reflect the highest temperature measured at any NOAA cooperative or first-order station within the state during May. 2026 max temps are the highest reported station reading through May 31.

Two things stand out. First, the 1896 records at the top of the list have survived for 130 years — the Southwest has been brutally hot for a long time. Second, the 1934 Dust Bowl dominates the middle of the list: 11 of the 50 state May records were set in a single year. May 2026 came closest to toppling the old records in Death Valley (123°F vs 124°F) and New Hampshire (97°F tied).

May 2026: The Station Records That Fell

While most all-time statewide May records survived (many are from the Dust Bowl), city-level station records crumbled across two distinct heat events. The Southwest baked from May 8–12, and then the heat dome expanded east for a once-in-a-century Northeast event on May 19.

Source: NWS station records and post-event summaries. For a deeper analysis of the Southwest records, see our Southwest Heat Wave 2026 analysis.

Are Mays Getting Hotter? 75 Years of NOAA Data Say Yes.

I ran the numbers on every May since 1950 in our NOAA database. The trend is unmistakable: the average US May temperature has climbed 2.7°F from the 1950s to the 2020s. And the rate is accelerating — more than half of that increase happened after 2000.

Source: NOAA NCEI Climate at a Glance, CONUS May averages. “Record-High Days” is the approximate number of daily record highs set during Mays in each decade from our GHCN-D archive. Normal baseline is 1901–2000 average.

The record-high day count is what really tells the story. In the 1950s, roughly 210 daily high temperature records fell during Mays across all US stations. In the 2020s so far (only six years in), we're already past 510. Extrapolated to a full decade, that's an 800+ pace — nearly 4x the rate of the 1950s. For a deeper look at how this fits the broader warming trend, see our analysis of whether 2026 is on track to be the hottest year on record.

Why the Dust Bowl Still Owns 11 of 50 State May Records

Scroll through the state records table and you'll notice 1934 appearing again and again: Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Nebraska, and Minnesota all set their hottest May temperatures during the Dust Bowl.

The Dust Bowl wasn't just dry — it was a perfect thermal storm. Plowed-under grasslands, exposed topsoil, and near-zero soil moisture turned the Great Plains into a griddle. The same drought-heat feedback loop we're seeing in 2026 (61% of CONUS in drought, driest January–March on record) played out at an even more extreme scale in the 1930s.

The fact that 2026, with modern soil conservation and irrigation, is approaching Dust Bowl May records in some areas is remarkable. In the Southwest, where urban heat islands amplify warming, several cities have already surpassed what the 1930s produced. The Dust Bowl records that survive are mostly in the Plains states, where the 1930s soil devastation created conditions we haven't (yet) replicated.

What's Driving the Heat: Drought, El Niño, and an Earlier Start

Three factors converged to make May 2026 historically extreme. The first is drought: January through March was the driest start to any year in 132 years. Dry soil heats up faster because there's no moisture to evaporate. With 61% of CONUS in drought, the land surface was primed to cook.

Second, the developing Super El Niño (ECMWF: 100% probability by November) destabilized the jet stream, allowing subtropical heat ridges to push north weeks earlier than normal. And third, March 2026 posted the largest temperature departure of any month in the 132-year US record (+9.35°F), meaning the Southwest entered May with soil moisture already depleted and baseline temps already elevated.

NOAA has 40 states under above-normal temperature outlooks through August. Our Summer 2026 Outlook covers the full national forecast, but the short version is: what we saw in May is likely a preview, not a peak.

Frequently Asked Questions

Data Sources

State May records from NOAA NCEI State Climate Extremes Committee (SCEC). Decadal temperature trends from NOAA Climate at a Glance. 2026 city records from NWS Phoenix, NWS Las Vegas, NWS Tucson, NWS Mt. Holly (NJ/PA), and NWS Boston post-event reports. Daily station data from our archive of 139M+ NOAA GHCN-D observations. Drought data from the US Drought Monitor.

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