The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Early May Record Scoreboard and Climatological Review
It’s time once again for our monthly climatological review. Here on this site, we present monthly summaries near the 8th of each month, and each is available if you want to go back through my Extreme Temperature Diary archive under my “Record Scoreboard Climatological Reviews” category (located on the upper left-hand corner of my home page):
https://guyonclimate.com/category/record-scoreboard-climatological-reviews/
I’m repeating my mantra from prior months:
April 2022 was near average, temperature wise, using 1901-2000 mean data and got ranked by the National Center for Environmental Information as 79th warmest for the lower 48 states, or 50th coolest since records began being kept in 1895:
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/national/rankings
Above average temperatures were experienced in the Southwest and south-central states with below average conditions across most of the north:
Brief summary for April 2022: Most reports of record warmth came from the West during the month. Most of the reports of record chill came from the Pacific Northwest and Midwest during the middle of the month.
Here are my two U.S. Daily Record Scoreboards updated through 3/01/2022 (data compiled from the following NCEI site):
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records
DHMX= Daily High Max Reports. DLMN= Daily Low Min Reports. DHMN= Daily High Min Reports. DLMX=Daily Low Max Reports.
For these data sets all monthly ratios of > 10 to 1 DHMX to DLMN or > 10 to 1 DLMN to DHMX are in bold type. The rankings are for the lower 48 states with the warmest ranking since 1895 of average temperatures being 128 and 1 being the coldest as of 2022. Blue colors represent cold months and red warm. Those months and years with counts close to a 1 to 1 ratio of highs to lows are colored black. Boldly colored months, such as December 2021, have ratios of more than 10 to 1 daily record highs to lows or lows to highs, and are either historically hot or cold, most of which have made news.
April 2022 had approximately a 1 to 3 ratio of record DHMX to DLMN individual record counts, so the color I used for this month was blue on the top chart.
April 2022 had approximately a 1 to 3 ratio of record DHMN to DLMX individual record counts, so the color I used for this month was blue on the bottom chart.
Due to climate change, we are seeing fewer blue colors on these Record Scoreboards with time, but April 2022 bucked this trend.
As stated, the ranking for April 2022 was 50, which was colored black since it was near average. I color rankings of +20 or -20 from the average ranking of 64 black, indicating that these are near average temperature wise. The top warmest ranking for 2022 would be 128 since rankings began in 1895.
May 2022 has gotten off to a warm start across the Southwest and south-central states, the same area that was anomalously warm in April. It’s too early to tell, if an early season heat wave will last long enough to produce an above average month, though.
Here is much more detailed climatology for April 2022 as complied by NOAA:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national-climate-202204
Assessing the U.S. Climate in April 2022
April was an active month for tornadoes, wildfires and late-season winter weather
Courtesy of Getty Images
Key Points:
- The average temperature of the contiguous U.S. in April was 50.7°F, which is 0.4°F below average, ranking in the middle third of the 128-year record. Generally, temperatures from the Northwest to the Great Lakes and into the mid-Mississippi Valley were below average, with much of the Southwest, Deep South and portions of the East Coast above average.
- April precipitation for the contiguous U.S. was 2.58 inches, 0.06 inch above average, ranking in the middle third of the historical record. Precipitation was above average across portions of the Northwest, northern Rockies and Plains, Great Lakes and Northeast and below average across the Southwest as well as the central and southern Plains.
- Two late-season winter storms brought blizzard conditions to the Northern Rockies and Plains during April with reports of 1-2 feet of snow and drifts of 4-8 feet from Montana to the Dakotas. A late season nor’easter brought more than a foot of snow to portions of the Northeast in mid-April.
- Dry and windy conditions across the Southwest and Plains contributed to an active start to the wildfire season. As of May 3, the largest fire across the U.S., the Hermits Peak Fire in New Mexico, consumed more than 145,000 acres and was 20% contained. Across all 50 states, 1.1 million acres have burned from January 1 through May 3 — 160% of average for this time of year.
- Several tornado outbreaks occurred during April, contributing to an above-average tornado count for April.
- According to the May 3 U.S. Drought Monitor report, 53.8 percent of the contiguous U.S. was in drought. Severe to extreme drought was widespread across the western half of the CONUS and parts of Hawaii.
Other Highlights:
Temperature
Washington state ranked third coldest on record for April while Montana ranked fifth coldest.
The Alaska statewide April temperature was 25.2°F, 1.9°F above the long-term average. This ranked among the middle one-third of the 98-year period of record for the state. Temperatures were below average across much of the Southeast Interior and Panhandle regions and above average across much of the West Coast and Aleutian regions.
For the January-April period, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 39.9°F, 0.8°F above average, ranking in the warmest third of the record. Temperatures were above average across parts of the West and also along the East Coast. California ranked sixth warmest on record for this period. Temperatures were below average in parts of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes.
The Alaska January-April temperature was 13.5°F, 3.3°F above the long-term average, ranking in the warmest third of the record for the state. Above-average temperatures were observed across much of the western and southern half of the state with the warmest departures from average occurring in portions of south-central Alaska.
Precipitation
Multiple late-season snow events contributed to a wet April for North Dakota, which reported its second wettest such month on record. Oregon and Minnesota ranked seventh wettest. In contrast, New Mexico had its second-driest April on record and Kansas ranked third driest.
April is climatologically one of the driest months of the year across Alaska. Even so, the state of Alaska, as a whole, ranked as the fourth-driest April in the 98-year record. All regions other than the North Slope received below-average precipitation for the month.
The January-April precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 8.25 inches, 1.22 inches below average, ranking 13th driest on record. Precipitation was above average across parts of the northern Plains, Great Lakes, mid-Mississippi Valley and the Northeast. Precipitation was below average across much of the West, central Plains and Deep South during the January-April period. California ranked driest on record while Nevada and Utah ranked third driest for this four-month period.
Despite a dry April, precipitation averaged across Alaska for the January-April period ranked eighth wettest and was generally above average from Bristol Bay to the Panhandle with the Central Panhandle region experiencing its wettest January-April on record.
Drought
According to the May 3 U.S. Drought Monitor report, 53.8 percent of the contiguous U.S. was in drought, down about 4 percentage points from the end of March. Drought conditions expanded or intensified across portions of the West, central Plains and Deep South. Drought contracted or was eliminated across portions of the lower Mississippi Valley, the Great Lakes, the Northern Rockies and Plains, and Pacific Northwest, and across portions of Hawaii.
This monthly summary from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides to government, business, academia and the public to support informed decision-making. For more detailed climate information, check out our comprehensive April 2022 U.S. Climate Report scheduled for release on May 12, 2022.
PUBLISHED
MAY 9, 2022
Here are “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days and extreme temperature outlooks:
Here is more April 2022 climatology:
Here is more climate and weather news from Monday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)
(If you like these posts and my work please contribute via the PayPal widget, which has recently been added to this site. Thanks in advance for any support.)
Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”