June Heat Waves In Vermont Never Used To Be Much Of A Thing. Then Climate Change Came Along

A time/temperature sign in St. Albans, Vermont during
 a record breaking heat wave last June 23 

 With the potential of 90 degree weather coming toward the end of the week, depending on how numerous the showers and storms become, I started looking at June heat waves in Vermont. 

Once upon a time, June heat wasn't really a thing. Sure, it happened once in awhile, but we usually had to wait until July and August to feel the big strong blasts of summer heat. 

Not any more. Climate change apparently has something to say about when we Vermonters experience summer heat. 

The year 1988 seemed to be the beginning of a turning point for June heat in Vermont, at least as measured in Burlington.  On June 15, 1988, it reached 97 degrees in Burlington, breaking what was then the record for the  hottest June temperature on record. 

On June 16, 1994, that record was tied. Then on June 19, 1995, the temperature in Burlington soared to 100 degrees, shattering the June record.

The number of 90+ days in Burlington's June record books changed during that time period. Ninety degree June heat was relatively rare in the  first four decades of the 20th century. Ninety in June happened only 12 times in the 41 years ending in 1941. 

Between 1942 and 1993, 90 degree June heat became more frequent, occurring in 34 out of those 51 years.  Now, the heat hits in almost all Junes. In the 31 years since 1994, we only missed out on 90 degrees in eight Junes.

Another bit of stats, although I know this is already number heavy: In the 87 years ending in 1987, it had only reached 95 degrees three times in June. In a little less than four decades since 1988, it's been 95 degrees 13 times.  

In the 2000s, extreme June heat almost became the norm.   It's been 96 degrees or hotter in all but one of the past five Junes.  Sometimes June heat started in May.   On May 27, 2000, the temperature reached 95 degrees, the hottest May day on record, breaking the old mark by two degrees 

On June 6, 2021, it reached 95 degrees, and on June 7 that year it was 96 which was, at the time the hottest for so early in the season 

I say "at the time," because on June 1, 2023 it reached 96 degrees. 

All this June heat culminated in a heat wave last June. Depending on what part of New England you were in, either June 23 or June 24, 2025 was the hottest June day on record in all six New England states. Each New England state reached at least 100 degrees.

In North Springfield, Vermont, it was 103 degrees, breaking the previous statewide record for June, which had been 101 degrees. Burlington reached 99 degrees on June 23 last year, barely missing the record for the month by one degree. Plattsburgh, New York, at 101 degrees, was among numerous cities in the Northeast that set all-time June records. 

THIS WEEK

If it gets to 90 degrees this week, I doubt we'll see record highs, but of course you never know. You need lots of sinking, hot air to create the clear skies that produce record heat. Instead, this warm spell will be muddled by embedded weather disturbances. Those disturbances will likely create clouds and scattered showers and thunderstorms which could keep the heat down. But not the humidity, of course.

The details: 

Today: Nice! Near 80 degrees, sunny low humidity

Tuesday: Nice! Sunny, with highs in the 80s. Humidity will at least be reasonably.

Wednesday Not so nice. Showers, maybe a rumble of thunder. Cloudy, turning more humid. Highs in the 70s to around 80

Thursday/Friday: Partly cloudy, humid, risk of showers/storms. Highs in the 80s to near 90.

Beyond Friday, the weather models are still arguing among themselves as to what's going to happen. I'll let them fight it out, and provide updates as we get closer to next weekend. It's only Monday, after all. 

I don't know whether we will have extreme heat later this month or not, But climate change has loaded the dice. These are no longer your grandfather's cool, comfortable Vermont summers. 

 

World Surprisingly Had Its Hottest January On Record This Year

Red hot world again. January was the warmest on record for
the Earth as a whole, with very few places on the
chilly side and many at record heat. 

Scientists got a surprise from the latest snapshot of global temperatures. It turns out January was unexpectedly the warmest on record for the world as a whole. 

Sure, the continental United States was chilly, as I reported in an earlier post on Monday,  but that was very much the exception

The National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI states: 

"The new January global record is particularly notable for having occurred during a La Nina episode, the cold phase El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Global temperatures tend to be cooler during periods of La Nina in comparison to periods with an El Nino present."

Not this time. 

 The three previous world record warm Januaries all occurred during the opposite El Nino, which tends to boost global temperatures. 

As always the NCEI data was sound, as other scientific organizations agreed with the assessment. The European Copernicus Climate Change Service, and Berkeley Earth both measured the Earth as having its hottest January on record. 

Almost the whole world was warm, with the hottest places relative to average in the Arctic, Alaska, northwestern and northeastern Canada, most of central and eastern Europe, southern South America and western Australia. 

The few cold spots were quite a bit chillier than you'd expect. Those rather small cold places were the as-mentioned central and southeastern United States, a good chunk of Greenland, far eastern Russia and a weird, very small area of southern Africa. 

NCEI still says there's only a 7 percent chance that 2025 will be the hottest year on record. 

The warm trend has been happening for long time, but is now accelerating. If you are under the age of 49, you've never seen a global January that was cooler than the 20th century average. 

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

 It's true that this warm January occurred during an El Nino, but it is a weak one, so it might not be having as much an effect on the world's temperature as a stronger one would. 

But I wonder if that fully explains why January was so warm. Snow cover was well below normal in the northern hemisphere. Snow reflect heat back to space, so if there's less snow, the Earth has an opportunity to warm up a little more than it otherwise would. 

But that still might not explain everything. 

One compelling explanation is clouds. Or more precisely, a lack thereof. 

Cloud cover on Earth was below normal in January, and in fact, clouds have been lacking for the past two years. Those two years have shown an alarming acceleration in the how fast the world is warming up. 

High, thin clouds tend to have an overall warming effect on the world. Low stratus or billowy cumulus clouds tend to cool us off a bit. It's those low clouds that have been lacking, explains the Washington Post. 

From above, these low clouds are shimmering white, which reflects the sun's heat back up into space much like that snow cover does. 

The next question is why there are fewer clouds. WaPo explains:

"Researchers are still unsure exactly what accounts for this decrease. Some believe the it could be due to less air pollution: When particulates are in the air, it can make it easier for water droplets to stick to them and form clouds.

Another possibility (Helge) Goesling said, is a feedback loop from warming temperatures. Clouds require moisture to form and moist stratocumulus clouds sit just underneath a dry layer of air about one mile high. If temperatures warm, hot air from below can disturb that dry layer, mixing with it and making it harder for wet clouds to form."

Goessling is a climate physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and is the author of one of the studies that looked at why the Earth was reflecting less heat back to space.  

Feedback loops are dangerous because they feed off each other.  If the cloud theories are correct, fewer low clouds will accelerate global heating. That accelerating heat destroys even more low clouds, which begets even more heat and so on and so on. 

Despite the temporarily chill we've been feeling here in Vermont this year, the unexpected global heat in January, plus these new studies, suggest we have more record-shattering heat in our not so distant future. 

Not just here in Vermont but throughout the entire world. 

Think it's been hot in recent years? You ain't seen nothin' yet. 

 

June Was World's 13th Consecutive Hottest Month As Climate Change Gallops On

Once again, lots of red on the world map for June,
2024, which was the 13th consecutive hottest month
on record. 

 The global data for the world's climate in June came in a few days ago, and what to you know?

June was the hottest on record.  It was the 13th consecutive hottest on record month.  Seems like a trend, ya know?  

All this is from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, which keeps detailed track of this sort of stuff. 

The long awaited slight global cooling trend which has been expected as El Nino ends has so far failed to materialize.  

Researchers say it's still coming, and months during the second half of the year probably won't make it the Number One position on the list of hottest months. But they will probably score at least in the Top 10. 

It does appear July is on track to maybe place just #2 on the list of the world's hottest Julys.  But it probably will come in at #2 after the extreme global heat of July, 2023.

The National Centers for Environmental Information now gives 2024 a 60 percent chance of being the world's hottest year on record and a 100 percent chance it will score at least in the Top 5. 

In June, the hottest places relative to average were the Caribbean area, parts of northern South America, larger swaths of Africa, the Middle East and parts of Southeast Asia. Overall, 14.5 percent of the Earth's surface experienced record heat in June, 2024, compared to just over 7 percent in the previous hottest June last year. 

Two nations or territories set all time record highs in June. Palau, a western Pacific Ocean island nation, reached 96 degrees and Egypt hit 123.6, says extreme temperature tracker Maximiliano Herrera. 

As has been the case for over a year now, cool pockets on Earth were hard to come by during June. The only relatively cool spots were the southern tip of South America, a few corners of Antartica, central Canada and a couple of small pockets in Australia and near Greenland. 

Global sea surface temperatures were at record high levels for the 15th consecutive month. 

UNITED STATES

For the U.S., June was the second warmest on record. 

Arizona and New Mexico has their hottest June on record, while 19 states, including here in Vermont, scored in the top 10. 

Through the first half of the year, four states are so far having their warmest year on record. They are  Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont (yay!) and West Virginia. Every state east of the Mississippi River except Alabama and Louisiana has had one of their top ten warmest first half of the year. 

Four new disasters were added to the rapidly growing list of weather and climate related disasters in the United States this year. These include a tornado and severe storm outbreak in the Midwest on May 25-26; a Texas hail storm on May 27-28 and another hail storm in Colorado on May 31-June 1.

There have been 15 billion dollar disasters in the U.S. this year. 

Other disasters might be added to the list of $1 billion dollar events, but they haven't been fully tallied u yet. Those include a severe weather outbreak in the Midwest on June 12-13; flooding in the Midwest in  late June, and Hurricane Beryl, which as we know was one of the causes or our recent new flood disaster in Vermont.  

And the wild global climate rages on.  

February Was World's 9th Consecutive Warmest On Record Month

Lots of red again, this time on the temperatures across
the world in February, relative to long term averages.

NOAA confirmed on Thursday what everybody pretty much knew:  

This year featured the world's hottest February on record. It was the ninth month in a row that turned out to be a record hot month for Earth, this according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. 

That's quite a trend. I know that El Nino boosted global temperatures. But it wasn't the strongest El Nino ever, that's for sure. Which means climate change almost surely influenced things, which of course isn't exactly shocking news these days. 

Ominously, in February, it seemed the oceans were generally the hottest relative to average. The places on Earth that featured temperatures the furthest above normal were the tropical, equatorial and eastern Atlantic Ocean;  the northern and eastern Indian Ocean and parts of the central Pacific Ocean.

I used the word "ominously" because warm oceans tend to create more powerful hurricanes, stronger non-tropical storms and heavier rain on land. We'll be hearing plenty of news for the rest of this year about intense floods, typhoons, hurricanes and other severe weather. 

On that land, the warmest places relative to 20th century averages were western Europe, eastern and southern Asia, most of South America,  the southern half of Africa and parts of central and eastern North America. 

As always, there were a handful of cool areas, but they were extraordinarily few and far between, as they have been for months. 

The cool spots relative to average were small parts of the the southeastern Pacific Ocean, a little patchy the southwestern Indian Ocean, in around the Koreas, a mini little  patch between Iceland and Greenland.  

Given the fact that December, January and February were each the world's warmest on record, it's obvious that meteorological winter (December 1-February 29) was also the hottest on record. Yes, I know in the southern half of Earth, that period was the hottest summer on record. 

This is one month where everything "matched" globally and locally.  Both United States and Canada had their warmest winter on record, too.  We did, too, here in Vermont. 

With El Nino fading and a likely opposite La Nina looming, our long string of record warm months will probably end soon. 

La Ninas tend to cool the Earth a bit, which is the opposite effect El Nino has.

If recent past history is any guide, the coming months in the next year or two won't be that much cooler. Most of them will probably score in the top five warmest, just as they did during the "cool" La Nina of 2000-2022,

Climate change will keep heating us up unrelentingly. Expect plenty more instances of extreme weather, with or without any kind of El Nino. 

2023 Was Hottest Year On Record In Burlington, Vermont. One Of The Wettest, Too `

Spectators watch near record flood waters in the Winooski
River blast past Winooski on July 11, 2023. Not only did 
the past year bring lots of extreme weather to Vermont,
it also turned out to be the hottest year on 
record, at least as measured in Burlington. 

 It's official. 

For the first time since they started keeping track of these things back in the 1880s, Burlington, Vermont had its first year with an average temperature of 50 degrees.  

That beats the old record for hottest year, set in 2012, which came out to 49.9 degrees. 

Even more remarkably, this makes it the fourth year in a row that was among Burlington's top 10 record hottest years.  The years 1953 and 1898 are tied for the 10th warmest years in Burlington, but all of the top nine years have been since 1998, just a quarter century. 

By contrast, 1978 was the last  year to score in the top ten coldest, and that year barely made #10.

Climate change is really re-writing the weather history books in Vermont, as well as the rest of the planet. It's not just Burlington, after all. When the data is all in, it's widely expect that the entire globe will have had its hottest year on record in 2023.

In fact, some climatologists believe 2023 was the world's hottest year in the past 125,000 years.

Back here in Vermont, climatologists say that in general, Vermont's is not only getting hotter. It's becoming wetter through climate change, though that wettest will be interrupted by at times more serious drought. 

That trend bore out big time in 2023.  Burlington had its seventh wettest year on record, with 44.78 inches. This is despite largely missing out on the torrents of rain in July and the area experiencing a spring drought.   

The correlation with climate change and wetness in the Burlington weather records isn't as strong as it is with temperatures but it's there.   Six of Burlington's top 10 wettest years have happened since 1998, but only one of the top ten driest years happened in that time frame (2001, to be exact).

Over the course of 2023, Burlington saw daily record highs broken or tied on 10 days. That included the hottest temperature on record for all of October, with 86 degrees. Only one record low was hit, on May 18. 

Last year, I didn't think we'd have a fourth year in a row with a top 10 hottest temperature. Although I've been proven wrong this year, I do wonder if 2024 will be among the hottest on record in Vermont. Maybe, but doubtful, though the world is expected to break 2023's mark for hottest year, or at least come close to it. 

Here in Vermont, if 2024 isn't another top 10 warmest year, it will very, very likely be warmer than normal. Even with climate change, it's still possible to have the occasional cooler than average year thrown in over the next few decades. But they'll be increasingly few and far between.

I also highly doubt we'll ever have another year that ends up in the list of top 10 coolest, unless something dramatic and unlikely happens, like a massive volcanic eruption on the scale or bigger than the 1815 Tambora eruption. That caused temporary cooling, and gave us in Vermont the famous "Year Without A Summer in 1816

Tomorrow, I'll have a review of some of the many weather extremes Vermont endured in 2023.

 

Confirmed: World Had Hottest October On Record By Wide Margin

 As promised, we now have NOAA's latest temperatures check on the world, this one for October. As I've hinted at previously, October indeed was the hottest on record. 

The National Centers for Environmental Information tell us that October was nearly 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the previous warmest in 2015. Half a degree doesn't sound like much, but that's a hugely wide margin when you take in the entire world's data. 

Wildly remarkably, October was the fifth consecutive month to break the record for the world's hottest. 

If you are under 47 years old, you've never seen a global October that was cooler than the 20th century average. The long trend of climate change continues, and has accelerated, at least temporarily.  

The warmest areas relative to average were the Arctic north of Canada and Alaska; most of Siberia and Mongolia, southern Europe, central South America, southeastern Canada and New England. 

 One relatively cool spot on Earth in October was much of Antarctica (which is a good thing, considering how worried we are about massive ice melt down there).

 The only other sort of coolish areas were a part of northern Scandinavia, a small patch of the Indian Ocean southwest of Indonesia, a tiny spot in central Australia and southeastern Montana. That's about it. And those areas were only slightly cooler than the long temp average. 

I've already seen climatologists start to analyze November so far.  While global temperatures aren't trending quite as far above normal as they did in October, November still seems to be in line to become the warmest on record.

This year is so far the warmest on record, according to NCEI. We now have a greater than 99 percent chance of this year being the hottest on record. That would surpass 2016, which came during the last big El Nino.

El Ninos, as I've mentioned so many times I feel like I'm living the movie "Groundhog Day," boosts global temperatures. El Nino works in conjunction with climate change to break many record high temperatures across the Globe. 

Since El Nino is expected to last at least through the winter, expect more global - and local - high temperature records in the coming months. 

Record Global Trend Continues: August Was World's Hottest On Record

The world had its hottest August on record this year.
The only place that was cooler than the 20th century
average was in and near Antarctica for some reason.

 The numbers are in for August and to almost nobody's surprise once again, it was the hottest on record for Earth as a whole. 

Here's Yale Climate Connections with the update: 

"Berkeley Earth, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service also rated August 2023 as the warmest August on record, crushing the previous August record by a huge margin. Global temperature amalyses extend back to 1850 in the NOAA database."

As I do every month, I'll note how long it's been since the world had even so much as a marginally cool August. If you're under the age of 45, you've never seen a global cool August. 

August was the 534th consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th century average. So yeah, this global warm trend has been going on for a little while, huh?

Before El Nino took hold earlier this year, most months were running in the top five warmest category, but not hottest ever.   Now, with El Nino, which usually gives global temperatures a boost, July and August have come in at record warmest.   

With El Nino expected to go full steam for the rest of the year, and climate change showing absolutely zero signs of letting up, all of 2023 looks like it will establish a new global record. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information says there's a 93 percent chance that this year will be the warmest on record

Reliable records go back two about 1850.

A whopping 228 major reporting stations across the world reported their hottest on record August temperatures. A grand total of zero reporting stations reported all-time coldest readings. 

Most of the cities that had record high August temperatures were in Japan, Turkey, Spain, France, and the southern United States. 

Through the end of August, fourteen nations or territories reported their hottest ever temperatures, Yale Climate Connections reports. 

 Reports from polar regions were mixed, but generally pretty damn bad. Antarctic sea ice extent for August was the lowest on record. On the sort of bright side, ice growth around Antartica was a little better than average. Even better, the Antarctic region had its 16th coolest August on record, seriously bucking the trend seen in the rest of the world during the month. 

Arctic sea ice extent was the eighth lowest on record. So not the worst, but definitely far from the best. 

Greenland is also closely watched, because unlike frozen oceans, any ice that melts off of the Greenland ice sheet will raise global sea levels

This summer in Greenland got less attention than it deserved. The amount of melting off of Greenland was the second worst this year since they starting keep track of this in 1978 via satellite. Only the epic melt year of 2012 was worse.

Greenland's melt rate was far above average from late June through July, when you'd expect the most melting in Greenland. However, by late August, it normally has started to get cooler up there, so ice melt doesn't usually amount to much.  

Not this year.  A mid-month melting spike astounded scientists, as the thawing approached record melt paces from June and July. 

With El Nino expected to last into the winter, and climate change roaring along, it looks like we'll see a few more record global hot months heading through the fall and winter. 

April In Vermont Hottest On Record, Part Of Long Stretch Of Warm Months

View of my yard in St. Albans, Vermont, this morning
May 1. Spring is way ahead of scheduled after a 
record warm month of April. 

 At least as measured in Burlington, this April was the hottest on record, with data going back more than 130 years.  

The mean temperature for the month in Burlington was 50.6 degrees. This beats the previous record set in 1945 for warmest April by a full degree. Which is kind of impressive. A warmest month is fairly rare, but becoming more common with climate change. Usually, though, when we do manage to break a record monthly high, it's by a couple tenths of a degree.

The Aprils of 1945 and 2023 were quite similar in that they both featured a spate of record highs reaching into the 80s during the second week in the month. 

In 1945, there were four days in row with temperatures in the 80s from the 10th through the 13th.  In Burlington, it reached 88 degrees on April 13, easily the hottest for so early in the season. There was another record high of 85 degrees this year on April 15. Plus a non-record high of 83 on the 16th. 

Same view of my yard exactly one year ago, May 1, 2022.
You can see how much further ahead with spring we are this
year. And last year was a very early spring, too! 

In both 1945 and 2023, the second half of the month cooled off significantly.  But the second half of April, 1945 was much colder than the corresponding weeks in 2023.  In that month near the end of World War II, it got as cold as 24 degrees and some days never got above 50 for highs. 

In the month just ended, there were no freezes and every day got to at least 50 degrees and several days topped. 60.  That's how we beat out 1945.

To nobody's surprise, April was much warmer than normal in other reporting sites in and near Vermont. Most were at or near the top of the list for warmest April.

Precipitation was much closer to normal than temperatures. Burlington measured 2.81 inches of rain, which was just a quarter inch below normal. Northern Vermont was a little bit on the dry side for April, while southern Vermont was a little on the wet side. 

MORE THAN A YEAR OF WARMTH

Average temperatures for a month are calculated based on all the averages for the 30 years ending in 2020.  Using that method of measuring, the last time we had a "cooler" than average month was September, which was marginally on the chilly side.

However, those 30 years ending in 2020 were quite a bit warmer than previous decades, due to the effects of  climate change. It truly is a "new normal"

I like to judge how warm or cool a month was based on what were considered average temperatures for the second half of the 20th century. 

If you look at it that way, the last time we had a cooler than average month was in January, 2022.  Which would mean we've had 15 consecutive months of above average temperatures, at least as measure in Burlington. 

Spring greenery has come much earlier than normal in
Vermont due in large part to the hottest April on record,
at least as measured in Burlington. 

Last year was the fifth warmest on record in Burlington, Vermont. This year is so far on pace to beat that, but of course the year is still young. A lot could change. 

Without climate change, the averages would be a roll of the dice. Generally speaking, half the months would be on the cool side, the other half warm. 

This doesn't mean we'll never again have a cooler than average month. Even compared to the 20th century average. I guarantee we'll have a cold month here or there moving forward. 

But the dice are now loaded. They're weighted toward warm. So from now on, the chances of having a month that is warmer than than the 20th century average is definitely greater than it being on the chilly side. 

You see real world effects of all this.  I've never seen trees in Vermont blossom into leaf as early as I've seen this year. Lawn care companies started mowing weeks earlier than normal. Since it's only the beginning of May, we can still have hard freezes. If that happens, apple and other fruit crops would be in jeopardy.

The good news is that at least for the next few days, though it will be cool and dreary and wet, the chances of frost are quite low. But who knows what will happen later in the month?

Not only has the weather become warmer, it's also more erratic. The roll of the weighted dice can be damaging with this new climate regime.