In these recently released stats from NOAA we’ll see that March 2012 was a wild weather month across the entire country.
Climate Highlights — March
• Record and near-record breaking temperatures dominated the eastern two-thirds of the nation and contributed to the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, a record that dates back to 1895. The average temperature of 51.1 degrees F was 8.6 degrees F above the 20th century average for March and 0.5 degrees F warmer than the previous warmest March in 1910. Of the more than 1,400 months that have passed since the U.S. record began, only one month, January 2006, has seen a larger departure from its average temperature than March 2012.
• A persistent weather pattern during the month led to 25 states east of the Rockies having their warmest March on record. An additional 15 states had monthly temperatures ranking among their ten warmest. That same pattern brought cooler-than-average conditions to the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California.
• Every state in the nation experienced a record warm daily temperature during March. According to preliminary data, there were 15,272 warm temperature records broken (7,755 daytime records, 7,517 nighttime records). Hundreds of locations across the country broke their all-time March records. There were 21 instances of the nighttime temperatures being as warm, or warmer, than the existing record daytime temperature for a given date.
• The first three months of 2012 were also record warm for the contiguous United States with an average temperature of 42.0 degrees, which is 6.0 degrees above the long-term average.
• The Northeast saw its warmest March in 118 years, beating out the previous warmest March (1945) by 0.9 degrees F (0.5 degrees C). The region’s monthly average temperature, 44.4 degrees F (6.9 degrees C), was 9.8 degrees F (5.4 degrees C) above normal.
• Between March 7th and 23rd, at least 127 new maximum temperature records were set at the thirty-five first order stations in the Northeast.
