The contiguous United States averaged 50.85 degrees Fahrenheit in March 2026 — 9.35 degrees above the 20th-century average. [1] That made it the warmest March in 132 years of NOAA records, and the first time any month has exceeded nine degrees above its historical baseline. The number is not a rounding error. It is a category shift.

Ten western states recorded their warmest March ever: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. [1] In every one of those states, average March temperatures exceeded their normal April averages. California's March was warmer than its typical May. Phoenix logged nine days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in a month that is supposed to mark the cool end of winter. [2]

The warmth was driven by an 11-day heat dome that parked over the southwestern United States in mid-to-late March, producing over 7,000 daily high-temperature records and nearly 2,000 monthly records across the country. [2] More than 500 counties, covering a quarter of the contiguous US and affecting an estimated 79 million people, recorded their warmest March on record. [1]

The broader context compounds the severity. NOAA confirmed that the twelve-month period from April 2025 through March 2026 was the warmest such span ever recorded for the contiguous US. [1] January through March 2026 was also the driest start to any year on record, with the country receiving less than 70 percent of normal precipitation. By March 31, nearly 60 percent of the contiguous US was in drought — the largest drought footprint since NOAA began tracking the metric. [1]

Globally, March 2026 tied with March 2024 as the second-warmest March on record, trailing only March 2025 by a negligible 0.02 degrees Fahrenheit. [3] All of the ten warmest Marches in the global record have occurred since 2015.

World Weather Attribution, the consortium that conducts rapid scientific analyses of extreme weather events, concluded that the magnitude of the March 2026 heat was "virtually impossible without climate change." [2] Their analysis found that human-caused warming added between 4.7 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit to the temperatures experienced during the heat dome. Without anthropogenic influence, the event would not have occurred.

The political context is quieter than the data warrants. The record was released by NOAA on April 8. [1] It received front-page treatment in the Guardian and ABC but was largely absent from cable news cycles dominated by Iran, tariffs, and the Supreme Court. [2] [3] On X, climate accounts circulated the data with urgency, while skeptics pointed to Alaska's fourth-coldest March as a counterpoint — omitting that the contiguous US, where 330 million Americans live, had just experienced something without precedent.

The heat dome is gone. The drought is not.

-- DARA OSEI, London