We employ record-breaking statistics to study spatial correlations of record-setting terrestrial surface temperatures. To that end, a simple diagnostic tool is devised, reminiscent of a pair-correlation function. Data analysis reveals that while during the hottest years, record-breaking temperatures arrive in “heat waves”, extending throughout almost the entire continental United States, this is not so for all years, not even recently. Record-breaking temperatures generally exhibit spatial patterns and variability quite different from those of the mean temperatures.