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The United States had its hottest summer on record this year, narrowly surpassing the previous milestone set 85 years ago at the Dust Bowl.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that the average temperature this summer for the contiguous United States is 74 degrees Fahrenheit, 2.6 degrees higher than the long-term average. The record heat caps a season full of extremes, with parts of the country experiencing persistent drought, forest fires, record heat waves, hurricanes and other extreme weather conditions exacerbated by climate change.
This summer broke the previous record set in 1936 by a hair, less than 0.01 degrees higher than in the Dust Bowl year, when huge parts of the West and the Great Plains were dried up by a severe drought.
Although this year’s summer was technically hotter than 1936, the very small gap puts the two years “neck and neck,” in what NOAA has called a “virtual tie”.
The NOAA report covers “Meteorological Summer,” which covers June, July and August. During this period, 18.4% of the country experienced record temperatures, including five states – California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah – which had their hottest summers in history. , according to the agency.
“Sixteen other states had the five hottest summers on record. No state ranked below average for the summer season,” NOAA officials wrote in the climate report.
In June, the Pacific Northwest suffered a heat wave that broke temperature records in Seattle and Portland, Oregon. More than 35 cities in the western United States have matched or set heat records during the multi-day heat wave, where temperatures soared as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit in some places.
Global warming is making heatwaves and other extreme weather events both more likely and more serious, and climatologists have said conditions this summer offer a glimpse of what may become more common in the future.
The NOAA report highlighted other extreme events that hit the country in August, including devastating flooding from Tropical Storm Fred, which hit western North Carolina; Tropical Storm Henri, which drenched parts of the northeast; and flash floods that killed at least 22 people in Tennessee.
Hurricane Ida, which hit Louisiana and left a trail of destruction from the Gulf Coast to the northeast, also inundated huge swathes of the country from late August through September.
“With 35 deaths in August, it was the deadliest month for flooding in the United States since Hurricane Harvey in 2017,” NOAA officials wrote in the report.
Dry conditions in the western United States also fueled a catastrophic wildfire season. In California, the Dixie Fire became the second largest in state history, while the Caldor Fire forced thousands to flee South Lake Tahoe in late August.
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