September Nationally Was Warm Month, Confirming Previous Reports; Disaster Mounting Too

Flooding from ex-Hurricane Ida in Manville, New 
Jersey in September. Ida will go down in history as
among the five most expensive hurricanes in 
U.S. history, says NOAA.

As the eastern two thirds of the United States enjoys a very balmy October so far, more official data has come in confirming September was a hot one for the nation as well.  

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information says September was the fifth hottest for the lower 48 out of the 127 years in its data base.

The climatologists there also added some more disasters to their data base of billion dollar disasters, adjusted for inflation for 2021. More on that in a moment. 

The warmth in September brings the nation to its tenth warmest year on record, at least for the part going from January through September. 

In September, the western third of the nation, the northern Plains and New England were the warmest, relative to average. Eight states in the Northeast and West had one of their five warmest Septembers on record. Here in Vermont, we had our sixth warmest September on record.

February featured an intense Arctic outbreak that lowered average temperatures for that month, which in turn lowered the year's averages slightly. So this won't be one of the top five national hot years unless for the United States unless there is extraordinary warmth for the rest of the year. 

Precipitation for the nation in September averaged out to be pretty close to average, with a wet East and dry central part of the United States 

NCEI says that through the end of September, the United States had endured 18 disasters this year with estimated costs exceeding $1 billion.  The record for most such disasters in a single year - inflation adjusted - was just last year in 2020.  We unfortunately have a shot at tying or breaking that record if the rest of the year is super extreme. 

This year's disasters have been more costly than  last year.  So far, through the end of September, disaster costs have amounted to $104.8 billion, more than the $100.2 billion for all of 2020.  Disasters this year have caused twice as many fatalities as in 2020.

Hurricane Ida plus the subsequent floods the remains of that storm caused in the Northeast will cost more than $60 billion.  Costs from that storm are still being tallied, so that figure will go up.  Ida will be one of the top 5 most expensive hurricanes since at least 1980.

Due to some technical difficulties, the NCEI was not able to put all of its data into its September report, and will try to update it by sometime tomorrow. If warranted, I will update this post with the new data. Within about a week or so, NCEI will issue their latest monthly report on how the entire globe fared with September climate data.

That data is expected to show September to be among the hottest on record on a global basis, in addition to just the United States.