Global Temperatures In February Cooled In The Most Minuscule, Inconsequential Way; U.S. February

February, 2026 was the worlds fifth warmest on record.
La Nina might have cooled the month a little, but
 still coming in fifth warmest under that La Nina
is disconcerting. It should have been cooler, if
not for climate change. 

After oh, so many months in which global temperatures were the warmest, second warmest or third warmest on record, February maintained a "cooler trend" of sorts that started in January. 

But it was so scant that this February was still among the top five warmest on record for the world says NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.

They write: 

"February 2026 was Earth's fifth-warmest February since records began in 1850, with a surface temperature 2.12 degrees F (1.18 degree C) above the 20th-century average. The 10 warmest Februaries on record have all occurred since 2016 and this month marked the 47th consecutive February with an above average temperature." 

For the past couple of years, it's been hard to find spots in the world during particular months that were chillier than the 20th century average. They were there, but few and far between. 

In February, the global temperature map was still overwhelmingly orange and red, indicating that most everyone was warmer than average.

But there were slightly more small cool patches than I've seen in a year or two. Those places were a section of the Arctic just north of Canada and Alaska; the southeastern United States, Scandinavia, northern Australia and a small pocket in southwest Africa. 

There were, as per the course in recent years many spots that were far warmer than the long time average from the 20th century. They include the western United States, especially the Southwest;  far northeastern Canadathe central North Atlantic Ocean; the Middle East; northwest Asia, parts of northern and eastern Africa, and parts of the western Pacific Ocean. 

Both January and February were a slight departure from recent years. Most months her the past there years or so were the warmest, second warmest or third warmest. So seeing two months in a row that were "mere" fifth warmest is a bit of a change. But not much of one.

It appears that in January and February, the world was probably feeling the fullest effects of the La Nina, which tends to cool the world.  If the world "cools" because of La Nina and the first two months of the year are still the fifth warmest out of the past 176 years, that's not great to say the least. 

Also, the ten hottest Februaries have all occurred since 2016.

NOAA predicts that La Nina will fade during the spring, and chances are we'll have an El Nino by summer or fall. El Ninos tend to warm up the world, so an El Nino risks taking the world to new heat heights, beyond the record years of 2023 and 2024. 

Global temperatures trends usually lag behind the onset of La Nina or El Nino, so my guess is we won't feel the effects of the likely oncoming El Nino much this year. But in 2027, watch out!

UNITED STATES

Map shows by how much temperatures were 
above or below normal during February, 2026.
The western two thirds of the U.S. was a blowtorch

The continental United States had its fourth warmest February on record, marked by another month of bizarre winter heat. Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming all had their warmest Februaries on record. Including those states, 19 states had one of their top ten warmest Februaries. 

The immediate East Coast from New England to the Carolinas was the coolest region relative to average. 

But those areas did not come close to breaking records.  Rhode Island came closest, if you ca call it that, logging in its 36th coldest February out of the past 132 years. Massachusetts was close, coming in at #38 on the list of chilliest Februaries 

Here in Vermont, we came in with the 50th coldest February in the past 132 years.

February also turned out to be the nation's fifth driest on record.

Interestingly, despite a record-setting blizzard on February 22-24, New England was very dry. Rhode Island, the state hit hardest by that blizzard, had its 11th driest February. It was even drier elsewhere in the region. 

Maine had its second driest February. It was the 7th driest in New Hampshire, 8th driest in Massachusetts and 10th driest in Vermont. 

The dry weather was widespread throughout the United States. Mississippi had its driest February on record. Other states in the top ten driest were South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Louisiana. 

The dry weather through the central an southern Plains contributed to numerous damaging wildfires. Those fires grew worse in March. 

Only North Dakota was a little warmer than average, coming in with its 32nd wettest February.

March so far is coming in as a real contender for the hottest third month of the year in the United States. It could even beat out the notorious March, 2012 for unseasonably early heat, a feat many thought virtually impossible. 

But climate change seems to make anything possible, which is a frightening thing. 

Meteorological winter, December 1-February 28, was the nation's second warmest winter on record, driven by ridiculous winter heat in the west. Incredibly, nine large states in the west had their warmest winter on record, while seven others scored in the top 10 warmest. 

Parts of the Northeast were on the cool side, but only clocked in at around 30th to 40th coldest, so nothing remarkable on that side.  

Is Climate Change Shifting Where Dangerous Ice Storms Set Up?

Lewis County, Tennessee after the late January ice storm
Research suggests that climate change might be making
ice storms more common in the South, but more research
is needed to confirm that. Photo from Tennessee 
Valley Weather/Facebook

Are ice storms moving to different and potentially more dangerous places? 

Some scientists are beginning to think so, and that could lead to more frozen disasters like the one that blasted Mississippi, Tennessee and other southern states in late January

 Drawing on long term records, computer modeling and new measurement, scientists in Texas concluded that a warming world isn't making freezing rain go away. It's just changing where it falls and when in the winter it occurs. "

Zong-Liang Yang, an earth systems scientist the University of Texas at Austin and postdoctoral researcher Chenxi Hu looked into this. According to science.org:

"To see how these changes might be playing out in the ground, Yang and Hu turned to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Storm Events Database, which compiles weather phenomena reported by individuals and vetted by the National Weather Service. 

When the researchers analyzed county-level  records from 1996 to 2025, they saw an emerging trend: More events along a band from eastern Texas to western Pennsylvania, as well as along the Appalachian Mountains, where low, cold air can get trapped. The timing of freezing ran events also shifted from December to February."

The locations Yang described here almost exactly match the zone affected by the disastrous late January ice storm,. 

Freezing rain is thankfully a bit hard to come by compared to other forms of precipitation. Snow needs to change to rain on the way down. Those raindrops must then encounter subfreezing air just before hitting the ground as liquid, which freezes into a glaze of ice upon impact.

If the cold layer near the ground is too thick, the rain will freeze into sleet, or little balls of ice on the way down. Sleet is a pain in the butt, of course, but at least it doesn't pull down trees and power lines. 

Also, freezing rain is often transitory. It'll hit briefly as an interlude between the time snow goes over to rain as temperatures warm. The warm/cold battle of air masses must more or less stay put to create a dangerous ice storm. 

Not everyone is buying the idea that climate change is shifting the places where ice storms are most likely - at least not yet

Esther Mullens, a climatologist at the University of Florida, told science.org that it still could be just natural variations that move ice storms around, or create trends in ice storms.

In 2025, Mullens looked at ice storms over the past 80 years and concluded that natural climate variations might explain the uptick in southern freezing rain storms. She concedes it could be that the jet stream is getting wavier than it used to be. 

A wavier jet stream is more likely to bring Arctic air blasts further south, which could increase the chances of freeing rain. But climatologists are still debating whether climate change is seriously messing with the jet stream like that. 

Still, there is a pretty compelling argument that the warming of the Arctic might be creating a wavier jet stream.  A wavier jet stream is more likely to create the right conditions for freezing rain than a flat west to east upper air flow.  

Another potential effect of climate change is it might affect how heavy the precipitation is. Even with a warmer world, it still very often gets below freezing in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere during the winter. 

A warmer world, though, is a wetter world.  A hotter atmosphere can hold more water that a cooler one. Storms like the one that hit in January draw moisture from warmer places like the southern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean or Caribbean.  That moisture slams into the cold air further north to fall as snow, sleet, freezing rain or a combination of all three.

Since the January storm was wetter than it would have been before climate change began in earnest, it was probably able to dump more ice and snow on the eastern U.S. that the same storm would have a generation or two ago.

The heavier the freezing rain, the more weight you get on trees and power lines. Snow in some storms might be deeper than it otherwise might be. We have anecdotal evidence of that right her in Vermont.Burlington's weather data goes all the way back to the late 1880s. Yet, 11 of the city's 20 biggest snowstorms all came in the past quarter century. 

You get the point. Winter storms can be counterintuitively worse in our era of climate change.  

Climate change can even make lake effect snowstorms worse. Lakes would be slower to freeze during warmer winters, so they'd have more opportunity to dump heavy snow downwind of the lakes on the days it does turn cold.

The data the Texas researchers used was based on reports by humans, who sometimes under-report or over-report the amount of ice during a freezing rain event. 

NOAA is working on a new tool that uses radar, rain gauges and an ice model to map freezing rain in real time, science.org says. 

The new tool would make an analysis like what Yang and Hu did more accurate, as we'd have more precise information on how much ice accumulated and where. 

All this shows that climate change isn't just about heat waves and warmer winters. Under the right conditions the warming world can make the rare wintry intrusions much worse. Worse, even, than what your grandparents remember when they walked through feet of snow to and from school, uphill both ways.   

October Was World's Third Warmest, Continuing This Year's Trend

Once again it was hard to find many cool spots around
the world. It was the third hottest October on record
according to NOAA. 

The National Centers for Environmental Information is finally catching up after this fall's 43-day government shutdown and we now have the global and national climate data for October, 

It turns out that, according to the report released on Tuesday, once again last month, we had the third warmest October on record. If that sounds familiar, it's because it is. 

Says Yale Climate Connections:

"This is the fifth time in a  row that a calendar month has placed third for all time warmth behind 2023 and  2024. While 'third warmest' may not sound eye-poppingly impressive, this comes on the heels of an astoundingly warm couple of years that were fueled by a strong El Nino dent atop long-term human-caused warming."

If you are under the age of 50, you've never seen an October in which the world saw a cooler than average global October. 

Very much like September, though October was the third warmest, it was much balmier than the fourth warmest, according to NCEI.  Together, 2023 through 2025 has been ridiculously warm, compared to past centuries.  

The warmest places, relative to average, were in the Arctic and Antarctica, northern North America, southeast Asia, the northern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean. In fact North America as a whole had their warmest October on reared. So did the Arctic and Antarctica. Antarctica's record was set by a wide margin.  

As usual, it was hard to find places in the world that were cooler than the 20th century average. An areas around Mongolia and south-central Russia were on the chilly side. Small pockets in southern Africa and South America also came in on the cool side. It looks like a remote spot in the far southern Pacific Ocean were chilly, too. 

So far, January through October, 2025 is running as second warmest on record says NCEI, mostly because of a hotter start to the year. Only 2024 was hotter.  I have my suspicions that this year might end up as third hottest, behind 2023 and 2024, but of course, who knows for sure. 

The bottom line is it's been insanely warm the last three years.

UNITED STATES

As for the United States, the Lower 48 had its eighth warmest out of the past 131 years, NCEI said. The warmest area was through pretty much the entirety of the Great Plains. Most states there had one of their top 10 warmest Octobers on record. 

Northern and eastern New England had a much warmer than average October, too. That was mostly driven by an early month heat wave that shattered previous records for the highest October temperatures on record. 

No region in the United States was particularly cool, though the Pacific Northwest and pockets of the southeast were slightly on chilly side for October. 

Precipitation was just slightly above average for the month in the United States. The northwestern Plains were on the wet side, but overall, rainfall wasn't all that extreme across the nation. 

 

New England/Vermont Drought Holds Firm, Only Slight Improvement After Last Week's Rains

Only slight improvement shown in this week's
 Drought Monitor for Vermont. The 
Green Mountains went from extreme 
drought down to a slightly less dire
severe drought. Everything else
in Vermont was unchanged from
last week's report. 

 The closely watched weekly U.S. Drought Monitor came out on scheduled this morning, and it shows only modest improvement here in Vermont, despite some decent rains last week. 

It demonstrates how hard it is to emerge from a drought. It was a flash drought, one that developed over just a few weeks. Unfortunately, once you're in a drought, it's hard to get out of it. 

The area of Vermont under extreme drought diminished a little since last week. The area of extreme drought was removed from the Green Mountain range  Extreme drought continues in western Addison County and east of the Green Mountains and roughly north of Route 4. 

This makes sense, since last week's storm dumped its heaviest rain along the spine of the Green Mountains. 

About 47 percent of Vermont was in extreme drought this week, compared to 59 percent last week. So, not much improvement. 

Areas that were in severe drought in Vermont are unchanged from last week. Far northwestern Vermont, a small corner of southwest Vermont and a thin sliver along the Massachusetts border were in less intense moderate drought, exactly the same as last week.

In the rest of New England and Northeast, areas of extreme drought diminished a little in New Hampshire and some of the mountains of western Maine. However, drought intensified in southern and eastern Maine. 

Drought conditions in New York were basically  unchanged, improving a little near Lake Erie but worsening a bit in some of the central parts of the state. 

It's raining again in the Northeast, so maybe there will be another slight improvement next week. 

VERMONT RAIN  OUTLOOK

A little more drought relief coming today through
early Saturday with 0.5 to a little over an inch of
rain in the forecast for Vermont. 

We are going to get a decent rainfall in Vermont today through early Saturday, though in some parts of the state, predicted rainfall amounts are cut back a little. 

The heaviest rain looks like it will go to the west and east of Vermont. Parts of central and northwest New York, and eastern New England should get 1.5 inches of rain or a little more than that by Saturday morning. 

Vermont should do OK, with maybe a half inch in low elevations of southwest Vermont, about three quarters of an inch across the southeast, central and northern parts of the state. 

Northwest Vermont, often the winner lately with rainstorms, will probably do it again, with an expected rainfall of a little over an inch by Saturday. 

Here are the picky details of the forecast: 

he initial burst of rain this morning is moving directly north over New York. It's having a tough time moving east into Vermont.

It will gradually get wetter, west to east across the Green Mountain State today. The rain might kind of sputter out for a time late this afternoon and early evening. But then a good wave of steady rain should come in tonight.

For much of the state, it will be kind of a stormy night.  On top of the rain, a stiff east wind will blow across much of the area. That will be especially true along the western slopes of the Green Mountain, where winds could gust to 45 mph or so.

A few favored spots along the western slopes could maybe gust to 55 mph, but that won't be widespread. If the rain is on the heavy side, the wind will be a little lighter. Periods when the rain is much lighter along the western slopes might bring some stronger gusts. 

Not a horrific storm, but tonight's weather will show that we're now into the season where we can get those blustery late autumn storms 

The rain should continue into Friday, but it will turn showery by afternoon. The rain will mostly end in southeast Vermont. 

Friday will be another blustery day, especially in the afternoon, with the wind coming from the northwest instead of the east.  The rain might stop completely for awhile Friday morning as a tongue of dry air tries to  come in. But showers will fill back in, especially north and along the western slopes of the central and northern Green Mountains. 

For trick or treaters, this Halloween will be a polar opposite of last year. Halloween, 2024 brought record-shattering high temperatures, and those ghosts and monsters and goblins on the streets basically enjoyed a typical summer evening. 

Not this year. A gusty northwest wind will add to the chill amid temperatures in the 40s to around 50 at best Friday evening. The showers will be relatively light, but persistent, especially central and north. 

As the night goes on, snow that will have started at the summits Friday afternoon will go downhill in elevation, reaching as low as 1,500 feet by Saturday morning. There could be light accumulations above 2,000 feet, and maybe several inches at the summits.

Saturday will be a blustery, cold, cloudy November day, which is a hallmark of the month. There could be some valley light rain showers and mountain snow showers, but amounts will be light. 

Sunday will be calmer.

As we look ahead in hopes of more drought relief, I don't see much. It looks like the pattern heading into mid-November will feature frequent chances of light rain or mountain snow. I don't see any signs of more drenching super-soakers for now. 

 

At Least 170 U.S. Hospitals At Risk Of Floods

Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee submerged
in floodwaters during Hurricane Helene last year.
Researchers say 170 U.S. hospitals are at risk
for flooding, some of them not in flood plains. 

A new study by KFF Health News has determined that 170 hospitals throughout the United States are vulnerable to flooding. 

The hospitals, totaling nearly 30,000 patient beds, face risks from significant and dangerous flooding, based on data from Fathom, a company considered a leader in flood simulation. 

Evacuating a hospital during a flood or other disaster is no easy feat. Picture trying to get critically ill people, hooked up to medical equipment out of a crumbling hospital in a hurry. So you can see why this is such a scary issue. 

None of the 170 hospitals in the list were in Vermont. For some reason here in the Green Mountain State, we tend to build hospitals on hills. 

According to KFF Health News:

"Much of this risk to hospitals is not captured by flood maps issues by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which have served as the nations de facto tool for flood estimation for half a century, despite being incomplete and sometimes decades out of date.

As FEMA maps have become divorced from the reality of a changing climate, private companies like Fathom have filled the gap with simulations of future floods. But many of their predictions are behind a paywall, leaving the public mostly reliant on free, significantly limited government maps."

Of the 170 hospitals described by KFF Health News as being at risk, one third are in places FEMA has not defined as flood hazard areas. 

The United States has already experienced tragedies and near misses from hospital flooding. 

During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, flooding at the New Orleans Memorial Medical Center left 45 people dead, including some patients. 

Last year, during Hurricane Helene, helicopters had to rescue dozens of people from the roof of Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee. Luckily, in that instance, nobody died.

The risk of flooded hospitals comes as the Trump administration slashed federal agencies like NOAA and FEMA that forecast and respond to extreme weather.

FEMA just responded with a quote they always use when asked about their function and the effects of cutbacks and fired employees. 

They just said criticism of FEMA is just "bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency." It's their boilerplate now. 

As climate change keeps taking hold, storms will continue to become stronger and stronger, dumping more and more rain and causing bigger and bigger floods.

That's a particular concern in  Charleston, West Virginia, where a single storm could flood five of the city's six hospitals at once, along with many of the city's schools, churches and fire departments.

As it is, floods routinely crash down out of the mountains and hollows in West Virginia, so Charleston is vulnerable. Wheeling, West Virginia served as a for example earlier this year.  In June a flash flood in and around Wheeling killed at least six people. 

Of course, closing a hospital in a flood plain and building a new one elsewhere is extremely expensive. 

You can try flood proofing a hospital, which is also expensive, but maybe doable.

As KFF Health News reports, an example is the former Coney Island Hospital in New York. It was badly flooded in Superstorm Sandy in 2012. 

The hospital reinvented itself as the Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospital, after a $923 million reconstruction project that included a four-foot flood wall and patient areas in elevated areas above the first floor. 

The hospital hasn't really been tested yet in a flood though. 

There's MUCH more from KFF Health News regarding these potentially unsafe hospitals. Click here to read more.  

Confirmed: NOAA Reports Vermont, Two Other States Had Driest August On Record

Charlotte Beach along Lake Champlain this past Sunday
showing remarkably low levels due to our ongoing drought.

Vermont was one of three states in a broad area of super dry summer weather than endured their driest August in at least 131 years. 

The news comes from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) which releases monthly reports on the previous month's United States climate data, and that of the whole world.

Kentucky and Ohio were the other two states besides Vermont that had their driest August. Ten other states A broad area stretching from Missouri to Maine had one of their top ten driest Augusts in those 131 years of record.

Vermont in August had on average 1.43 inches of rain in August.  The only other year that even comes close to the record dryness was 1957, with 1.56 inches. 

For comparison, the wettest August was 2011, with an average Vermont rainfall of 10.08 inches. That was the year Tropical Storm Irene hit the state, causing one of the worst floods in Vermont history.

As we well know, a flash drought developed in Vermont during August and has been intensifying this month.  A new weekly U.S. Drought Monitor due out Thursday morning will give us an idea of how much worse it has gotten in the past rainless week. 

It wasn't just us, of course. Which such a large area experiencing a dry August saw drought start, expand and intensify. Those areas include the lower Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio Valleys, and of course much of the Northeast. 

August for the nation as a whole was on the dry side, coming in  at the 23rd driest out of the past 131 years. . The only notably wet state was Georgia, which had its tenth wettest August. 

The only other states that came in wetter than average were California, Nevada, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota.

The nation as a whole had its 27th warmest August out of the past 131 years. Six western states plus Florida had one of their top ten hottest Augusts on record. 

Both North and South Carolina had one of their top 10 coolest Augusts. A few counties in the Piedmont regions of those states had their coolest-ever August. In the age of climate change, it's become increasingly rare to see any region have a record cool month, but it still happens once in awhile. 

DROUGHT BRINGS ODD TEMPERATURES

Back here in the Northeast, including here in Vermont, droughts -  especially in the summer -  tend to bring above normal daytime temperatures and cooler nighttime lows. The air is dry, and the ground can't really add moisture to the atmosphere. 

So it becomes sort of desert-like. During the day, the sun doesn't use its energy on evaporation, because there's little to evaporate. So all that energy goes into boosting afternoon high temperatures. At night, moisture isn't around, so all the sun's heat radiates to space. 

Also, during droughts, there's no storms around to keep things cloudy. Cloudy skies would have brought cooler days and warmer nights. 

The lack of moisture and clouds in meant Vermont had its 20th warmest average daily high temperature and its 38th coolest overnight lows during August. This pattern was repeated throughout the Northeast and Ohio Valley. 

It's also continuing into September as the drought rolls on. Burlington has yet to see a daytime high under 70 degrees this month, which is odd for this late in the season. But most nights have cooled into the upper 40s and low 50s, and it's been even cooler than that away from Lake Champlain. 

VERMONT DROUGHT UPDATE

The situation obviously continues to worsen here in the Green Mountain State as we keep going day after day without rain. 

Some rivers, like the Otter Creek, are at record low levels. Parts of the Lamoille River near Jeffersonville, the East Branch of the Passumpsic at East Haven and the Clyde River at Newport are at their lowest levels on record for mid-September.

Virtually all other rivers and streams in Vermont are close to record lows.  I'll have more news on the drought's effects around here in a post coming soon. 

The weather forecast continues to be discouraging, with no change from the predictions I've been mentioning the past few days.

It was sunny, warm and dry Monday. It will be warm and dry today, tomorrow and Thursday. A decaying storm along the North Carolina/Virginia coastline might throw some clouds our way tomorrow, but, alas, no rain. 

The skies will clear out Thursday, and we'll have a brief excursion into summertime weather, with many of us reaching the low 80s.

You'd want sharp cold fronts this time of year to bring rain. We've got a pretty strong one coming Thursday night or very early Friday, but, again, it will have no rain with it this time, aside from a low risk of sprinkles in a couple spots. 

We'll have a brief cool down Friday and Saturday with highs only in the 60s. We'll have to be on the lookout for some areas of frost early Saturday morning. It will then turn warm again for a few days. 

Our next shot at rain still looks like it will come around September 25 or 26.  It's way too soon to know whether it will turn out to be any kind of real rain or another whiff with sprinkles or nothing. Some computer models give us some moderate rain, while others indicate practically nothing at all. 

We'll wait and see on that, Meanwhile, keep doing your rain dances. And do it with gusto.  

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. 

 

Report: Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases Continue To Zoom Upward

All kinds of greenhouse gases are continuing to increase,
so the pace of global warming shows no sign of slowing. 

 If you think the world is starting to find success at reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we belch into the atmosphere, think again. 

Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - three of the main greenhouse gases, rose even faster than in 2022, according to the World Meteorological Organization

 As the Washington Post reports: 

 Concentrations of carbon dioxide - the most important driver of global warming - are now growing faster than at any time since our species evolved, according to the World Meteorological Organizations' annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The increase can be traced back to stubbornly high rates of fossil fuel consumption, the report said, as well as ecosystems that are becoming more likely to produce emissions and potentially less capable of absorbing excess carbon."

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere last year was a little over 420 parts per million, a level Earth hasn't experienced since the Pliocene Epoch, which was more than three million years ago. You missed that era because human beings didn't exist yet. But at that time, scientists estimate the world was about five degrees warmer than it is now and sea levels were 30 to 60 feet higher than they are now. 

Most of the extra carbon dioxide that accumulated in the atmosphere last year is from us burning coal, oil and gas, like we have since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Carbon dioxide started to increase with that Industrial Revolution and has accelerated since. 

But there might be something called a positive feedback loop increasingly adding to the equation. That's when a trend - climate change in this instance - gets reinforced and boosted by that very same phenomenon. 

Wildfires boosted by climate change also added extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The amount of this gas increased by 2.3 parts per million in 2023 the twelfth year in a row that CO2 went up by more than two parts per million.

This feedback loop also involved other greenhouse gases as well 

The WMO said atmospheric levels of carbon monoxide and methane both went up sharply last year. 

The spike in carbon monoxide was the largest yet observed. Most of that comes from wildfires, as burning trees release this chemical into the air. Global carbon emissions from forest fires were 16 percent above average during the 2023-24 fire season. 

A large share of that probably came from Canada, which had by far its worst fire season on record in 2023 with 37 million acres burned. 

Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane emissions are also increasing, too.

Those surging methane levels are partly due to bacteria living in landfills and from cows.  A lot of methane comes from wetlands.  It turns out this is a feedback loop. Methane helps warm the atmosphere. Then, a toastier atmosphere allows wetland to increase their methane emissions.

And on and on it goes. 

Thawing Arctic permafrost might well be adding extra methane to the atmosphere. Another example of global warming creating even more global warming. 

The only vague bright spot regarding methane is that 2023 emissions were a wee bit smaller than 2022.

The environment also takes up carbon, removing it from the atmosphere, so that's a good thing. However, there's bad news on this one, too. Per the Washington Post:

"Meanwhile the net amount of carbon taken up by ecosystems last year was about 28 percent lower than in 2021 and 2022, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Monitoring Laboratory. This decline may be in part because of 2023's record high temperatures, which are known to stress plants and cut into ecosystems' ability to serve as a carbon sink."

Since 2024 is virtually guaranteed to be even hotter than 2023, this trend will likely continue.  

Given the political climate, I don't see any slowing of greenhouse emissions anytime soon. So the world will keep getting hotter and hotter. 

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.  

Will Vermonters Join The Ranks Of 3.2 Million "Climate Refugees"?

Homes damaged by flooding back in July in Cambridge,
Vermont being flooded again on Tuesday.  How many
floods like this can people take before they give up?

Just in the past week, a report came out showing that 3.2 million Americans have fled "climate abandonment" areas - places where an increased risk of more and more severe flooding has forced them to move.   

Given the serious flooding we had this week, I have to wonder if some Vermonters will soon join the ranks of those climate refugees.  Monday's flood was an agonizing setback. 

As climate-related disasters swirled around the United States and the world, Vermont felt at least temporarily safe from all that.

 We seemed to blissfully escape the scary, dangerous stuff as the decade of the 2020s opened.

Maybe after the disastrous flood and windstorm of Halloween, 2019, we'd be safe for awhile. 

Sure, we had our extremes. Record heat, some droughts, some wind storms hit in 2020, 2021 and for most of 2022. But it wasn't anything to get too worked up about. We felt safe.

But I had a feeling the other shoe would drop. And it definitely has in the past 12 months. 

A storm on December 23, 2022 brought historic wind gusts that caused extensive damage through wide swaths of Vermont. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington recorded a wind gust of 70 mph, its second highest gust on record. Power was cut to more than 70,000 homes and businesses. 

Flooding also closed roads and damaged property. Then a flash freeze and mini-blizzard halted travel on Vermont roads that evening. 

On May 18 of this year, after what had been a remarkably warm spring that prematurely allowed crops and blossoms to sprout, a hard freeze hit.  The one-night frost decimated much of Vermont's apple and strawberry crops, and caused extensive damage in the vineyards of the state's burgeoning wine industry.

Those two events weren't primarily flood disasters, but they were unsettling.  

Then the summer floods hit. As we know, the worst of it hit on July 10 and 11 with communities from Ludlow to Barre and Montpelier to Johnson suffering devastating blows.

This wasn't a one shot deal either, Repeated localized flash floods from the end of June into mid-Augusts expanded the destruction. 

Each of these events resulted in disaster declarations for different parts of Vermont. I have a feeling this latest storm will also put the Green Mountain State under a disaster declaration. 

SO NOW WHAT?

Although the storms have varied, flooding is the biggest risk here in Vermont.  One has to wonder how much more people can take,  Some homeowner and business owners have now suffered damage twice in five months. 

Monday night's flood crest of 17.58 feet on the Lamoille River in Johnson means half of the top 10 worst floods there have occurred just since 2011. 

Who would want to deal with that?

We are already seeing signs that the repeated floods are eroding the sense of community as much as they eroded riverbanks and streets. After being inundated several times,  owners of the grocery store in Johnson opted not to reopen the business, which had five or six feet of water inside it on July 10-11. (At last report, another brave business person might open a store in that location, we'll see).

WPTZ-TV last night aired an interview with two women whose house in Cambridge was trashed in the July flood. They were almost done fixing things when the latest flood damaged their home again. They looked tired. The two said they are staying in Cambridge. But will all their neighbors do the same?

I also wonder how residents and businesses owners in communities like Ludlow, Barre, Montpelier and Waterbury will keep sticking it out with the threat of more and more frequent, destructive floods.

If people abandon these communities, it would be part of a national, and probably worldwide trend, judging from that report about 3.2 million Americans moving to new locations due to climate disasters.  

As CBS News reports:

"Many of those areas are in parts of the country that also have seen a surge of migration during the past two decades, including Sun Belt states such as Florida and Texas. Such communities risk an economic downward spiral as population loss causes a decline in property values and local services, the group found."

 Vermont is regarded as sort of a "climate refuge," but as I wrote in July during our flood siege, that might be a bit of an illusion.  

Many of our nicest, most cohesive towns and small cities are in flood plains. Which makes the risk of people abandoning Vermont town centers even more fraught than in other areas. That downward economic spiral CBS mentioned could hit all of our wallets here in the Green Mountain State.

One of Vermont's signature images is its tight knit towns and relative lack of commercial sprawl.   It's one of the main reason lots of tourists are drawn to the state.

Unfortunately, many of these beautiful old towns and small cities were built in flood plains. When they were built, their location was one of necessity, as the rivers helped supply power and served as commercial routes. 

These towns generally have stopped needing rivers for these purposes long ago. So is the repeated floods brought on by climate change worth the risk? 

Likely channeling all of us, Gov. Phil Scott during his press conferences about the latest flood used words like "gut punch" and "heartbreaking."   How many gut punches can people endure before they give up on their downtown/flood plain businesses and homes?

We're going to find out in the coming years and decades, and the end result might not be pretty. As these floods keep coming, Vermont will become a much less familiar place. 

To me, anyway, as a lifelong Vermonter, that would be a tragedy. 

Hot Times In The Arctic: Annual Report Card Shows Big Changes Affecting Entire World

The Arctic got at best a D- in NOAA's annual Arctic report
card that takes a look at how climate change is affecting
the top of the world. Remember, what goes on in the
Arctic does not stay in the Arctic .

 Most of the world has had a really hot year in this age of climate change. 

Relatively speaking, the Arctic was arguably the most out of whack, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's annual Arctic Report Card, which was released Tuesday. 

The main takeaway from this year's edition: The Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the world as a whole, and had their hottest summer since at least 1900,

According to NPR:

"'The Arctic is now more relevant to us that it has ever been before,' said NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad. 'In many cases, what we're seeing is - by a few years - the kinds of impacts that we're going to see elsewhere in the country.'

Climate change in the Arctic doesn't just offer a view of the future. It also directly influences worldwide changes across ecosystems, from sea-level rise, to new weather patterns to altered wildlife migrations. 

As Spinrad put it,' what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic."

The report has plenty of examples of how warming in the Arctic is screwing with people who live near the upper reaches of the Earth, and everybody elsewhere. 

The Arctic had its hottest summer on record and its sixth warmest year on record. Despite the summer heat, the Arctic "only" had its sixth lowest sea ice extent on record.  That was because some pockets of the Arctic were relatively cool, like the East Siberian Sea and areas of ice near Alaska. That slowed the ice melt in the summer a little. 

Greenland lost 150 billion tons of ice. That's bad because Greenland is the second biggest source of global sea level rise. One mitigating factor became apparent this year. A warmer Arctic means a wetter Arctic. At least most of the time. That means it snowed more than usual in Greenland this year. The extra snow ensured that the loss of Greenland ice was less than the recent average. 

It's worth noting that the peak high point of Greenland's ice sheet, 10,000 feet above sea level, got above freezing this summer for only the fifth time on record. 

Worldwide commerce is being affected by a warming Arctic, or better or worse. As the Washington Post tells us:

"The Northwest Passage, which allows ships to pass between the Atlantic and Pacific archipelago, was relatively ice free by late August....The Northwest Passage has long been an object of fascination as a means to dramatically reduce shipping distances and costs, and especially since 2007, when dramatic melting first opened it up."

Shipping companies are really taking notice of this. Early in my lifetime, it was quite a laughable idea that the Northwest Passage would be a viable shipping route. How times change with climate change. 

Wildfires, of all things, are becoming increasingly common in the Arctic.  As I've already reported, most of Canada was seemingly on fire during 2023. That includes the far north of that nation.

Sure, as noted, the Arctic is by and large getting wetter, but the droughts in between the rains are also getting worse. 

Per the Washington Post: 

"More than 90 percent of the 11 million acres that burned across Canada through the end of October was in the Northwest Territories, according to the report. Data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service released Tuesday showed that Canada accounted for 23 percent of global wildfire carbon emissions this year."

Climate change is making Arctic salmon populations weird. That's important because that's the livelihood of many people in the Arctic. 

Says NPR: 

It'll be interesting, and probably alarming to see what happens in the next 12 months up in the Arctic. El Nino is helping to supercharge climate change, at least temporarily. 

Though I'm sure there will be record warmth up there this winter, it won't matter too much quite yet because it will still be too cold for appreciable warming.

But a warm winter would make less ice for than normal, setting the stage for even lower sea ice extent next summer. Greenland remains a wildcard. I wonder if huge heat waves - at least by their standards - will cause even greater ice loss than in recent years. 

Remember the quote cited above: What goes on the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. It's part of the reason we in Vermont choked on wildfire smoke last summer. Gawd knows what a hot Arctic will bring us next year. 

Global Temperature Checkup: May Was World's Third Hottest

Lots of red again. Most of the world was warmer than
average in May.  Ranked as third hottest on record.

 As we do every month, let's check in with NOAA's Centers for Environmental Information to see how the previous months climate did across the globe.  

As always, the news is lousy.  May, 2023 was the world's third hottest month, at least during the past 174 years of records. 

The first five months of 2023 combined were the fourth warmest overall.  This pretty much already guarantees that this year will once again be among the top ten warmest on record. 

Climate change continues apace. 

I say this every single month when I do this update, but it's worth saying again, just because it's so dramatic. If you're under the age of 47, you have never seen a month on Earth that was cooler than the long term average.

The world's oceans, along with both North and South America, had their hottest May on record. The Earth's southern hemisphere was why the world as a whole "only" had its third hottest May.  That southern hemisphere logged just its 23rd warmest May out of the past 174 of 'em. 

The hottest areas of the world, at least compared to historical averages, was virtually all of Canada (no wonder they have so many wildfires!); much the northern tier of the United States;  southwestern and northeastern Europe and most of South America. 

The few relatively chilly areas included a large chunk of India, parts of southern China, central Australia and substantial parts of Antarctica.

Looking at just the United States, we had the 11th warmest May out of the last 129 years. The northwestern quarter of the nation was very warm. Washington had its warmest year on record and seven other states in the northwest/Northern Rockies had one of their top ten warmest. 

The Southeast was cool, with South Carolina reporting its 10th coldest May on record. 

I remember being struck an odd temperature pattern in Vermont for May, which featured warm days and chilly nights. The NCEI data back me up.  The Green Mountain State had its 18th coldest average minimum temperatures for May, but somewhat warmer than normal highs, ranking 54th out of 129 years. 

 As of May 31, the United States was up to nine weather disasters each costing at least $1 billion. These do not include the near-constant storms in the southern United States so far this June. These disasters cost 99 lives and have caused at least $23 billion in damage.

June data will be available in mid-July or so. Not sure if the United States will be warmer than average, but I do know the world as a whole will be on the hot side.  A series of epic heat waves have already hit large swaths of Asia, Canada and Central America, to name just a few hot places so far this month. 

Planet Earth Had Its Fourth Warmest February On Record

Another hot global month is now on the books.

Once again, on a global basis, February was a toasty 
month. It was the fifth warmest on record, at least
 for the past 174 years.

On Tuesday, the National Centers for Environmental Information put out its monthly report, this time covering February. The month was the world's fourth warmest on record.  

The hottest spots, relative to average, were the Arctic, northern Europe, southwestern Asia and the eastern United States.

The few cold spots, again, relative to average were in northern Canada, parts of the western United States and northeastern Siberia.

The Arctic had its third lowest ice extent on record. Antarctica and its lowest ice extent on record. 

"February, 2023 marked the 44th consecutive February and 528th consecutive month with global temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average," NCEI reported.

Chile, Taiwan, Pakistan and Cyprus reported all time record highs for those nations and territories in February. That brings to 17 the number of nations and territories that reported all time record highs in 2023. And we have ten months to go. 

 Overall, meteorological winter, which runs from December 1 through February 28, was the world's fifth warmest on record.   Each of the last nine meteorological winters on a global basis are among the top ten warmest on record as well. 

 

Worldwide, January Was 7th Warmest On Record, Continuing Earth's Climate Change Trend

The numbers are in, and January was, globally among the top 10 warmest in history. 

As we report every month, January, 2023 was among
the  hottest in history. It came in at 7th hottest.
As you can see by this map, very few areas
were cooler than longtime averages. 

According to the NOAA's National Centers for Environmental information, January, 2023 was the seventh warmest out of the 174 years of NOAA records.  

With just one month clocked in for the year, NOAA has already determined there is more than a 99 percent chance that 2023 will rank among the ten warmest years on record. 

January, 2023 was the 47th consecutive January and 527th consecutive month with temperatures at least slightly above the 20th-century average.

So, as I like to do every time the NCEI monthly summary comes out, I'll point out that if your birthday is this month (February) and you are at or under 44 years of age, you've never seen a month on Earth that was cooler than the long term average.  

The warmest places relative to average were the Arctic, western Europe, the eastern continental United States, all but northeastern Canada, Alaska, and southern South America. 

Pretty much the only places in January that were cool relative to average, were northern Siberia, parts of southwestern Asia, Antarctica and sections of Greenland. 

Where the were cold waves, some of them were intense. As Yale Climate Connections reports, China reported its coldest temperature on record on January 22 with a temperature of minus 63.4.  It was a fairly brief cold wave, and most of China ended up having a slightly warmer than average January. 

Myanmar tied its all time coldest temperature on record at 21 below, 

For the month as a whole, 13 nations and territories - almost all of them in Europe - and their warmest Januaries on record, says Yale Climate Connections. (As I noted on February 14, seven of the United States, including Vermont had their hottest January on record).

No nations or territories reported a record cold January last month. 

At the Earth's poles, the news from January wasn't good. Despite some relatively below normal temperatures, sea ice extent around Antarctica was at a record low last month.  Arctic sea ice was the third lowest of the 45 years they've been keeping track of it. 

If you look at a trend map of global temperatures over the years, you'll see that temperatures reached a new peak at around 2016 and have stayed roughly at that level ever since. 

Climate change goes in fits and starts, so it's not surprising there are periods when the trend line in global warming varies.

We've been in an La Nina pattern for a few years now. A La Nina tends to cool the world a bit, and is a large reason why recent years have been among the top ten warmest, but not THE warmest. 

Still, each of the nine past years were in the top nine warmest, with 2022 placing at #6. 

La Nina is weakening now, though there is a months-long lag on how that will affect the world's temperatures. Many forecasts indicate we might flip to an El Nino pattern by this spring or early summer. 

El Ninos tend to warm the globe. Depending on how strong any upcoming El Nino is, we could easily see the world set a new record for hottest year in perhaps 2024 or 2025,

Yes, 2022 Is A Year Strewn With Tons Of Mega Weather And Climate Disasters

Devastation in Fort Myers Beach, Florida after Hurricane Ian.
The hurricane was the most expensive natural disaster to hit
the world so far this year. 

 If you feel like your news feed this year has been filled with reports of huge weather and climate disasters, you're spot on. 

A report earlier this month by insurance broker Aon indicates the world has endured at least 29 disasters that cost $1 billion or more, as Yale Climate Connections reports. 

Of course, the costs of the disasters are still being tallied. Some of them, like droughts, are still ongoing.  

The most expensive disaster so far this year was Hurricane Ian in Florida, with well over $20 billion in damage. Some estimates are that Ian's tally could end up closer to $100 billion. 

Drought damage, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, have so far cost $38.4 billon.  

We've seen an increase in disasters each costing $20 billion or more in recent years. As Yale Climate Connections states: "This is greatly concerning, as mega-disaster are likely to overwhelm local resources needed to respond and recover, threaten insurers with insolvency, and disrupt global supply chains."

The U.S. Treasury Department is launching an assessment of worsening extreme weather and the impact this is having on insurance rates.  

Insurance is threatening to become unaffordable, or already is unaffordable, for people due to industry losses in big disasters. 

Worse than the cost of disasters is of course the loss of human life. The 137 deaths associated with Hurricane Ian is of course tragic. 

But heat waves tend to kill many, many more people.  Extreme heat waves in Europe this year are estimated to have caused 16,000 excess deaths. 

Probably the most victimized nation with disasters this year is Pakistan.  An unprecedented spring and early summer heat wave there caused immense drought damage to crops.  It also rapidly melted glaciers, which ironically caused devastating flash floods in mountainous regions. Many of these floods were from "glacial outbursts."

Lakes would form behind large ice dams as glaciers rapidly melted in the heat. Then these ice dams would collapse, sending walls of water and debris into populated valleys below.

After that, Pakistan had an extreme monsoon season that flooded perhaps 60 percent of the nation. Flood water still lingers in some areas as it will take months for the water to completely drain away. 

In the United States, ,Hurricane Ian is by far the most expensive disaster this year. Drought comes in as the second most expensive U.S. disaster so far this year, with $4 billion in mostly crop damage and counting. 

Numerous severe weather and flood outbreaks in the spring and summer collectively caused at least $16 billion in damage in the U.S.

Of course, there's a couple months left to go in 2022, so these numbers could go up even more. There's still time for a late season hurricane, severe weather outbreaks sometimes hit the U.S. in the fall and early winter, and destructive windstorms sometimes sweep Europe in November and December. 

April Was World's Fifth Hottest, Continuing A Consistent Trend

Most of the world was once again warmer than the average
of all the years since 1880. Only the eastern Pacfic
and northwestern North America were on the cool side. 

As I wrote a month ago, it seems like on a global basis, every month for at least the past year or so has been around the fifth hottest on record.  

Add April, 2022 to that list. The month tied with 2010 as the fifth hottest on record, says NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. 

So, we'll do the same thing we' e done every month, with this slightly updated sentence, taking into account April's global temperature, and quote this familiar sounding sentence from the April report: 

"The 1 warmest April months have occurred since 2010, with the years 2014-2022 all ranking among the 10 warmest Aprils on record. This marked the 46th consecutive April and the 448th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average."

As always, there were a few small cold pockets in a world of heat. 

North America did manage to have its chilliest April since 2018, which isn't really saying all that much. That was driven by persistent chill in southern Canada and the northern United States west of the Great Lakes. 

The only other notable cool spot, at least relative to the rest of the world, was the eastern Pacific Ocean.

That was a sign that the La Nina pattern is still going full throttle. La Nina is a periodic cooling of swaths of the Pacific Ocean. This normally has a slight cooling effect on the world's temperature as a whole.

But as we've seen over the past year, this "cooling" pressure is preventing individual months from being the hottest on record. But we're still scoring in the top 10 each month.  This is all an ominous sign for when we someday finally flip over to an El Nino, which warms both the eastern Pacific Ocean and the world in general. 

A record setting warm month would likely really set off some dangerous, extreme weather events across the globe. As if we're not having enough of them already. 

Every April temperature for the world as a whole, 
the departure from normal, since 1880. See a trend?

La Nina is forecast to last for several more months at least. That's bad news if you don't like hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico threatening the U.S. coastline. 

La Nina tends to encourage Atlantic hurricanes. It's a big reason why we've had such busy hurricane seasons yearly since 2017. This year is looking bad, too.

Pretty much all the hurricane forecasters are calling for a busy Atlantic hurricane season. The only question is how many of these storms end up hitting the coast. 

The first four months of the year, taken together, are also the fifth warmest on record. Given the ongoing La Nina the year at this point "only" has a 27.8 percent chance of being among the five hottest on record. It's pretty much a lock already for being among the 10 warmest. 

In April, no nation or territory established an all time record high temperature,. That's to be expected, since April is the middle of spring or autumn, depending upon which hemisphere you're in. Obviously, national heat records would be established in the summer. 

However, so far this year, three nations - Paraguay, Uruguay and Australia - have established or tied national heat records.