LOS ANGELES, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- July 2022 was the hottest month ever recorded in Salt Lake City, the capital city of the Southwestern U.S. state of Utah, with an average temperature of 87.3 degrees Fahrenheit (around 30.72 degrees Celsius), local media reported Monday.

That is 6.2 degrees Fahrenheit (around 3.44 degrees Celsius) warmer than an average July and more than a full degree Fahrenheit (around 0.56 degrees Celsius) warmer than the previous hottest July, the one the area experienced just last year, according to the report of local television station KUTV, affiliated with CBS.

July 2022 was also record-breaking with 18 days reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit (around 37.78 degrees Celsius), said the report, adding that's the most Salt Lake City has ever reached in one month.

Every part of southwest United States 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, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a 2021 report.

Thanks to the region's high temperatures and low precipitation levels, megadrought in U.S. 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.