In December, when floods and tornadoes battered large swaths of the South and Midwest, temperatures were the warmest ever for the month – 6 degrees above the average for the 20th century, the report found. Federal weather officials said Decembers wild El Nino pushed 2015 in the U.S.to near-record levels for heat, moisture and downright extreme conditions, federal weather officials said. Every state in the contiguous US had warmer than average temperatures.
Advertisement
As we reported last week, 2015 was the second warmest on record for Anchorage with an average temperature of 39.9 ºF, which is 4.1 degrees above average.
The World Meteorological Organization said 2015 would be the hottest year ever globally and that 2016 could be hotter because of El Niño. No state was unusually cool.
The Western U.S. was particularly warm, as was the Southeast.
As for temperatures, past year was also the 3rd warmest on record for Texas according to NOAA. It was the fourth most extreme year in the United States. Only 2012 saw hotter average temperatures. Only 1973 and 1983 were wetter. “We’re going to be dealing with more extreme heat events and more extreme rainfall events, and I think that really showed up in the results from the year as a whole”.
As part of the monthly report, NOAA also released information about extreme weather events that cost more than $1 billion dollars.
The year closed with a record warm December for the Lower 48, capping off the country’s second-warmest year in the historical record.
December 2015 marked the first time in 121 years “that a month has been both the wettest and the warmest on record”, he added.
Of the 15 warmest years on record, 14 have occurred in the 20th century.
Advertisement
Eleven of 2015’s 12 months were warmer than normal, and, averaged over the entire year, every single state was warmer than normal. December was the hottest on record – a full 3.3C (6F) above – as well as the wettest on record. These events included a drought event, 2 flooding events, 5 severe storm events, a wildfire event, and a winter storm event.
