© Getty Images/Rob CarrJohn Rose tries to cool off while selling water to passing motorists on a street corner in Baltimore in July.
The average U.S. temperature during the summer of 2011 was 74.5 degrees, which was 2.4 degrees above the long-term (1901-2000) average. Only the Dust Bowl year of 1936, at 74.6 degrees, was warmer.
Four states - Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Louisiana - had their warmest summer ever recorded, the climate center also reported.
Average temperatures for the summer in Texas and Oklahoma, at 86.8 degrees and 86.5 degrees, respectively, exceeded the previous statewide average temperature record for any state during any season.
Texas also suffered through its driest summer on record. The state is in the midst of its worst drought since the 1950s. More than 81% of the state is listed as experiencing extreme drought, the worst category, according to Thursday's U.S. Drought Monitor.
The drought monitor also reported that a third of the contiguous USA is currently in a drought.
A total of 15 states in the South and East sweltered through one of their top 10 warmest summers on record.
" Based on a government index using residential energy demand as an indicator of temperature, "the contiguous U.S. temperature-related energy demand was 22.3% above average during summer," the climate center noted in an online report. "This is the largest such value during the index's period of record, which dates to 1895."
On the flip side, two states - Oregon and Washington - had a cooler than average summer, while California had its wettest summer on record.
U.S. climate data go back to 1895. The climate center defines summer as June 1-Aug. 31. It will release global temperature data for the summer of 2011 next week.
The Associated Press also contributed to this report.
it might be just me but i have noticed it being really hot in edmonton alberta ( as most people say ohhh its so nice out lets injoy the heat ) im sitting here thinking has it ever been hot like this for this long befor .. i think of my past and i dont remember it being hot like this day after day after day and yet no one seems to be the wiser .... to much of anything can kill a person .. right ... just wondering