Yet ANOTHER World Record Hottest Month Recorded In April

Once again, hard to find cold areas (blue) that were chillier
than the 20th century average around the world in April. 

The world just had a record hot month, something that's been happening for nearly a year now. The April data is now in from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, and the month was toasty again. 

Says NCEI:

"This is 0.18 degrees C (0.32 degrees F warmer than the previous April record set most recently in 2020, and the eleventh consecutive month of record high global temperatures. April, 2024 marked the 48th consecutive April with global temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average."

The hottest areas compared to long term averages are northern South America, western Africa and the stretch of Atlantic Ocean between those two continents. Other notable hot spots relative to average were northern Canada, areas around the Indian Ocean, places near the border between Asia and Europe and eastern Asia.

As usual, cold spots were hard to come by. Parts of Antarctica were cold, which has been a trend in recent months. Other areas that came in slightly on the cool side (but not by much!) include central Australia, the southern tip of South America and a few lonely spots in the far North Atlantic. 

Overall, it was an early spring. The snow extent in the Northern Hemisphere was the lowest on record. 

Since the first four months of 2024 were record warm, NCEI gives the entire year a 61 percent chance of being the warmest on record, even beating the boffo warm 2023. NCEI also says that 2024 is a sure bet to score at least in the top five warmest. 

El Nino has ended, which tends to boost global temperatures. That, combined with climate change, helps explain why the past 11 months have been globally the hottest on record. 

The opposite La Nina  is taking hold which tends to cool the world just a bit. That's probably why NCEI is hedging its bet on this year being the hottest on record. I've seen some climate change observers suggest the run of global record warm months will end in about June. 

We shall see!

UNITED STATES

 For the Lower 48, April was the 12th warmest on record. No individual states had their warmest April on record, but a few scored in the top ten. 

The January to April period in the U.S is the fifth warmest on record. 

I could not find one county in the Lower 48 of the
United States in April that was cooler than average,
White counties were near normal, Orange ones
were warm, 

For the second month in a row, cool temperatures were hard to come by anywhere in the United States. 

That's odd, because even in a warm month, you usually see at least a small section of the nation with cooler than average temperatures. 

Not in April, at least not really.  A found quite a few areas that were pretty close to average, mostly along the West Coast, northern Plains and Florida. But a county-by-county breakdown of April temperatures revealed no areas that were noticeably cool for the month. 

The warmest areas relative to average were mostly in the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic states. 

April in the U.S. was on the wet side, but not by a huge margin. It was the 41st wettest out of 130 years of records. In addition to the warmth, the Ohio Valley was among the wettest parts of the U.S. relative to average Parts of the central Plains and western Gulf Coast were also on the soggy side. 

Five more disasters costing $1 billion or more were added to the growing list for 2024. That brings the total documented so far to eight this year. 

The new ones included severe storm outbreaks in February and early April, along with two winter storms, one in the Northwest and one in the central U.S. during January. This list does not include the huge tornado outbreak in the nation's middle in late April.

Though that disaster is virtually certain to have cost more than $1 billion, proper assessments aren't done  yet. I also suspect a tornado outbreak earlier this month, and the epic storm in Houston Thursday evening will also each cost more than $1 billion.