Warmest March, Warmest 1st Quarter, Warmest 12 Months Apr-Mar, 2nd Warmest Oct-Mar in U.S.

April 9, AM Update: The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) posted the preliminary U.S. climate summary for March this morning. The report confirmed that this was the warmest March for the contiguous 48 states since the beginning of official national climate statistics in 1895. The average temperature of 51.1° was 8.6° above the long-term March average and a significant 0.5° above the previous record in March 1910. The only previous month in 118 years of data with a greater departure from average was January 2006.

The extent of the record breaking was truly astonishing. Among the highlights:

• 25 states had their warmest March on record
• 15 other states had top-10 warmest Marches
• The only state with below-average temeperatures was Washington.
• Every state had a record daily warm temperature
• Hundreds of all-time March temperature records were set
• 21 low temperatures were equal to or higher than the previous daily high temperature record

The average temperature of 42.0° for January-March in the contiguous U.S. was also the warmest on record at 6.0° above the long-term average. For the 3 months, 25 states had their warmest first quarter, and 16 more had top-10 temperatures.

For the 6-month cold season (October-March), it was the second warmest on record (3.8° above average) for the contiguous U.S., behind 1999-2000. There were 21 states across most of the Northeast and Midwest with record warm cold seasons.

Original post:

After the warmest March in both the Northeast and Midwest it was to be expected that the extreme heat of March 2012 exceeded even the previous record March of 1910 in the contiguous U.S. From Stu Ostro of The Weather Channel:

NOAA (who'll post full analysis at 11a ET): Record warmest March (warmer than 1910), & Jan-Mar, &12-mo Apr-Mar period in 48 contig. #weather

— Stu Ostro (@StuOstro) April 9, 2012

Details to be posted as they are available.