News

Sizzling summer is one for the books

 

BY MARGOT HABIBY, Bloomberg News
Saint Paul Pioneer Press
Sep. 15, 2006

 

The continental U.S. endured the hottest summer this year since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the second-warmest since recordkeeping began more than a century ago, U.S. forecasters said Thursday.

A July heat wave that set more than 2,300 daily high-temperature records across the nation and 50 new all-time records contributed to an average temperature between June and August of 74.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just shy of the 1936 record of 74.7 degrees and well above the 20th century average of 72.1 degrees.

The warm summer helped make the first nine months of the year the warmest January-to-August period since recordkeeping began in 1895, surpassing a record set in 1934, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Eight of the past 10 U.S. summers have had above-average temperatures, NOAA said.

Globally, the Northern Hemisphere, including land- and ocean-surface temperatures, had its third-warmest summer since recordkeeping began in 1880, forecasters said.

The warmest Northern Hemisphere summer was in 1998, they said.

The Dust Bowl's drought and dust storms, which afflicted parts of the U.S. for as many as eight years beginning in the 1930s, have been immortalized in books and films — including John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" — with images of "black blizzards," clouds of dust and sand that obscured the sun for days at a time.