Interactive Map: The Hottest Cities in U.S. vs. the Fastest Warming

by Climate Central

Check out the interactive map above to compare the hottest places with those that are the fastest-warming.

The hottest cities are pretty much where you would expect them to be, all located in southern states, like Florida, Texas, and Arizona. And these top 25 cities all either have blistering summer heat — McAllen, Texas, for example, averages 87°F in July and August — or are just generally hot year-round, as is the case in Miami.

Conversely, the fastest-warming cities aren’t clustered in any one region. In fact, the top 25 fastest-warming cities are scattered over 16 states. Some of these rapidly warming cities are traditional hotspots, like Phoenix and Las Vegas. But many are not places you would consider to be hot, like Fargo, N.D., or Minneapolis.

To find the hottest cities, [Climate Central] looked at the top 200 largest metro areas in the U.S. and calculated their average annual temperature from 1981-2010. To figure out which of those 200 cities have been warming the fastest, [Climate Central] calculated how average annual temperatures have been changing since 1965.

Of the 178 cities with sufficient data for our analysis, all but three have seen their average temperatures warm overall in the past 50 years. The top 25 cities have all seen temperatures climb by more than 0.6°F per decade — that’s at least 3°F hotter over 50 years.