Has it felt to you like this year was even more ridiculously hot than previous years? Turns out (sadly) that your gut feeling (and extreme perspiration) was right. According to The National Weather Service, with just two months left in the year, there’s a better than 99 percent chance that 2014 will be the warmest year on record for California.
The state has already set a record for warmest first six full months of the year back in June and is now on track to top 1934 as the hottest year in history (well, at least since records started being kept in 1895).
Update: Virtually certain 2014 will be California’s warmest year on record. #cawx #cadrought pic.twitter.com/VYeqwXYyDg
Update: Virtually certain 2014 will be California's warmest year on record. #cawx #cadrought pic.twitter.com/VYeqwXYyDg
— NWS Hanford (@NWSHanford) November 4, 2014
And it is not just those 120 degree days that are helping to set the dubious record, it is also the unusually warm overnight low temperatures. “It’s not getting as cold as it used to get,” California state climatologist Michael Anderson told Climate Central.
But not all is lost, with two months left there is still time for California to cool off and not end up having the warmest year on record. Climate Control asked Paul Iniguez of The National Weather Service how that would be possible:
California“would have to have a December that’s basically colder than anything we’ve had in California,” more akin to a typical winter in Nebraska, “which isn’t going to happen,”
The National Weather Service gives that possibility a less than 1% chance of happening…
