VIENNA, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- The year of 2018 is set to be the hottest in Austria's 252 years of recorded history, the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) said on Thursday.

Preliminary analyses of its approximately 270 weather stations and many more climate analyses across the country show this year is set to be 1.8 degrees Celsius warmer than the long-term average, said the institute.

The year 2014 is the current record-holder at 1.7 degrees warmer than the average, followed by 2015 on 1.4 degrees warmer, it said.

The warm conditions were striking this year, with six separate months ranking in the top 10 warmest for that respective month, said meteorologist Alexander Orlik of the institute.

The number of "summer days," defined as having temperature highs of 25 degrees or more, was largely double that of an average year, with many regions in the country seeing this record broken.

The number of sunshine hours was also 11 percent higher than average, putting it in the top eight since these measurements began to be recorded in 1925.

It was also a dry year and several wider regions in the country saw 20 to 40 percent less rainfall than average, it said.