US city experiences hottest month on record: Report

Washington, Aug 2

July 2022 was the hottest month ever recorded in Salt Lake City, capital city of the US state of Utah, with an average temperature of around 30.7 degrees Celsius, local media reported.

That is about 3 degrees warmer than an average July and more than around 0.56 degrees warmer than the previous hottest July, the one the area experienced just last year, Xinhua news agency quoted local television station KUTV as saying in a report on Monday.

July 2022 was also record-breaking with 18 days reaching 37.7 degrees Celsius, said the report, adding that's the most Salt Lake City has ever reached in one month.

Every part of southwest US experienced higher average temperatures between 2000 and 2020 than the long-term average and large portions of the region have experienced drought conditions since 2000, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Due to the region's high temperatures and low precipitation levels, a mega drought in US Southwest is now the worst in at least 1,200 years, according to a study published in February in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Utah's Great Salt Lake, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, dropped to its lowest recorded level in July amid the historic drought.