This July has seen so many record daytime and nighttime temperatures that if you plot them on a map, they show a nearly complete image of the lower 48 states. 

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Almost 9,000 daily records were broken or tied last month, including 2,755 highest maximum temperatures and 6,171 highest minimum temperatures (i.e., nighttime records). It should be noted that the tally of records collected so far is not complete – more are expected to come in as station data from across the U.S. is mailed to the National Climatic Data Center. 

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