This Christmas Shattered Heat Records

There was no white Christmas for the eastern half of the U.S. this year, far from it in fact. Record high holiday temperatures in several states — 86 degrees in Tampa, Florida, 83 degrees in Houston, Texas, 67 degrees in Boston, Massachusetts, 68 degrees in Burlington, Vermont and 66 degrees in New York City, just to name a few — are an exclamation point on the end of what will be the globe’s hottest year to date.

The heat is adding fuel to severe weather in several states, storms that turned deadly across the South.

Across the country, the weather has more closely resembled spring than typical December temperatures.  “According to preliminary data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), at least 2,693 record daily highs were tied or broken across the U.S. during the first 23 days of December.  An additional 3,912 record-warm daily low temperatures have been set during the same time period,” the Weather Channel reported.  “By comparison, just 147 daily record lows and 140 additional record cool highs were set in the same time frame.”

And the string of broken temperature records isn’t limited to the U.S. either.  NOAA recently announced that this November was the hottest in the 136-year period of record, “at 0.97 degrees C (1.75 degrees F) above the 20th century average of 12.9 degrees C (55.2 degrees F), breaking the previous record of 2013 by 0.15 degrees C (0.27 degrees F).”  Thus November became the seventh consecutive month that a monthly global temperature record has been broken.

Read more at This Christmas Shattered Heat Records