United States Had Another Warm Month In March, Very Wet In Some Spots, Too.

Hot times roll on for the United States and the world as a whole. 

If you look carefully, you'll find only two out of 
about 1,000 counties in the United States that
were a bit cooler than average in March.
Both are in remote parts of California. 

Data from NOAA says the Lower 48 had its 17th warmest March on record, with pretty much no areas reporting cooler than average conditions. Which is odd.  

Meanwhile, some of the first analyses of global temperatures have started coming out. They suggest that world had its 10th record hot month in a row.  

No state had their absolute warmest March on record, but several came close. March was among the top ten warmest in eleven states, including Vermont.

Remarkably no states were cooler than average in March. In most months, the prevailing weather pattern dictates that some parts of the nation are on the cool side while others are warm.

The closest we could come to "cool" regions were mostly in the Southwest and parts of the Rockies, where several states were only slightly warmer than the long term average. 

There are about 3,000 counties in the Lower 48. Breaking the March data down county by county, I only found two in California that had a slightly cooler than average March. They were Modoc County in extreme northeastern part of the state, and Alpine County, a remote region in the Sierra Nevada mountains. 

Up in Alaska, they had their third warmest March on record. 

March for the nation as a whole was also on the wet side, coming out 30th wettest out of the past 130 years. 

 New England was especially soggy.  Connecticut and Massachusetts had their fourth wettest March out of the past 130 years. New Hampshire and Vermont experience their third wettest March, while Maine and Rhode Island were second wettest. New Jersey and Delaware also had one of their third wettest March. 

The Plains and the Ohio Valley were bit on the dry side during March. However the Ohio Valley has really made up for it this month, with bouts of flooding so far in April. 

The United States tallied another $1 billion plus disaster in March. It consisted mostly of severe storms and tornadoes in the central and southern parts of the United States. That's already the third confirmed weather/climate disaster this year that caused at least $1 billion in damage.

There's already at least two potential candidates for additional $1 billion disasters. Those include a severe weather in the South and a strong storm along the Eastern Seaboard on March 21-23, and this week's tornadoes, severe storms and extensive flooding across the South. 

Summaries for the world as a whole have been coming in for the past few days. I'll have more on that in an upcoming post. Spoiler: Think more hot times.