With much of the nation enduring the coldest summer on record, over the first seven months of the year California is officially experiencing its hottest year ever recorded.
The San Bernadino Sun reported that that the three-plus years of drought has taken its toll and raised temperatures to a record 1.4 degrees above the previous record. “It’s obviously a significant record, going back more than a hundred years,” Scott Sukup, a meteorologist with NOAA’s National Weather Service, acknowledged. “It’s certainly possible to have a record hot year for the state of California,” he added. According to NOAA, the next three months of 2014 are expected to be hot as well.
The main reason for the above average temperature, according to climatologists, is a high pressure system early this year that blanketed much of the state. The system has also brought a good deal of humidity into the atmosphere, resulting in warmer evening temperatures.
Unfortunately, the chances for an El Niño condition to cool down the state and bring some desperately needed precipitation has been significantly reduced, the Sun further reported. “There’s no relief in sight,” lamented Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “No El Niño. No nothin’.”
Moreover, Patzert is predicting more problems ahead for the Golden State: “As we get into September and October, the thing we’re going to have to watch out for — because it’s been so unbelievably dry — is the fire danger is off the scale.”
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