Richmond just had its second-hottest summer on record

State of play: Richmond recorded an average temp of 79.6 degrees from June to August — the second-highest since the National Weather Service started tracking in 1939.

• The only hotter summer in nearly nine decades of records was 2010, when the average was 80.8 degrees, per NWS.

• You can blame August for our second-place record-setting summer. August 2026 was Richmond's hottest on record, clocking in at an average of 80.7 degrees.

Between the lines: Those are the recorded temperatures, not the feels like temperatures, which got well into the triple digits this summer.

📈 Duh: Summer temps have been trending upward for decades.

• Case in point: This summer was 5.5 degrees hotter than 1979, Richmond's coolest summer on record, when the June-through-August average was 74.1 degrees.

Zoom out: The contiguous U.S. recorded both its hottest summer and hottest August to date, with record heat stretching across much of the Southwest.

The bottom line: We're ready for fall, which officially starts Tuesday.