Weather and Climate News

This is how hot the United States could be in the future

Days Above 100°F: Projections

Average summer temperature have risen a few degrees across the West and Southern Plains, leading to more days above 100°F in Austin, Dallas and El Paso all the way up to Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, and Boise. It’s worth noting that this trend has been recorded across the entire Northern Hemisphere, as show in this WXshift animation.

Small Change in Average, Big Change in Extremes

To understand what’s happening with extreme heat, we need to get a little geeky and take you back to Stats class. The classic bell curve represents the distribution of all temperatures at a location. The bulk of temperatures — those close to average — sit near the middle of the curve. Record temperatures, which are rare,

More Hot Days Across the U.S.

Climate change is driving up summer temperatures across the country. We often talk about warming in terms average temperatures, which can be perceived as small to the public, but any rise in the average temperature leads to a rise in the the number of days that are extremely hot.

After May Pause, Heat Set to Return

For much of the U.S., May brought a break from the string of months that have been much warmer than normal and even the warmest on record in many instances. But a heat wave set to sweep across the country will soon turn up temperatures again. Averaged nationwide, U.S. temperatures were very close to normal in May, although there were a few

Summer Is Hot, And Getting Hotter

June 1 marked the first day of meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere, time for beach trips, barbecues and sweating through summer’s heat. This hottest of all the seasons is getting even hotter as the planet warms from the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Meteorological summer differs from astronomical summer, which is

Summers Are Getting Hotter

Happy meteorological summer! We examine the average summer temperature trend in these cities. Summers are trending hotter for 92 percent of the markets we analyzed, with locations in Texas and the Intermountain West experiencing the most warming since 1970. Additionally, we examined summer temperature trends in all of the NCEI climate divisions.

Hottest Days Coming Earlier

With Memorial Day and the unofficial summer vacation season just around the corner, summer heat will soon begin to settle in. After a phenomenally warm February for much of the country, many of you have been asking us to take a look at how much earlier in the year the first occurrence of summer-like high temperatures are arriving.

U.S. Drought at Lowest Level in Nearly Two Decades

After years of intense, record-setting drought across the U.S., particularly in the Great Plains and California, the country is now experiencing its lowest level of drought in the 17 years since the U.S. Drought Monitor began its weekly updates. Less than 5 percent of the U.S. was in some stage of drought as of May 4, the most recent update

warm springs in columbia, south carolina

More Warm Spring Days

Astronomical spring, marked by the vernal equinox, begins at 6:29 a.m. (10: 29 GMT) on Monday, March 20. This is the date when the amount of daylight is equal to the amount of night across all parts of the globe. The term “equinox” comes from the Latin, meaning “equal night.” Spring is getting warmer, on average, as the globe heats up from the

Leaves Emerging Earlier as Planet Warms

The large winter storm and hard freeze that have followed the very warm February in the Northeast provide a vivid example of a weather one-two punch that may become more common in the future. Spring, as measured by the appearance of the first leaves on trees, is arriving sooner than in the past as the planet continues to warm from greenhouse gases

Here’s Your 2016-17 Winter in Review

This was one of the 10 warmest winters on record for many spots in the U.S. east of the Great Plains; some of the warmest areas relative to average were southeast Texas, the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, and Florida. Only the Northwest was substantially cooler than average for the winter. Of the 154 stations we analyzed: 9 stations had their warmest