U.S. Has its Warmest Winter on Record; Major Deluge Coming to TX, AR, LA

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/us-has-its-warmest-winter-on-record-major-deluge-coming-to-tx-ar-

By: Jeff Masters , 5:31 PM GMT on March 08, 2016

The contiguous U.S. just experienced its warmest winter on record, said NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information on Tuesday, with the three-month meteorological winter period of December 2015 through February 2016 coming in tops for the 121-year period of record that began in 1895. Every state had above-average temperatures, and 36 states had a top-ten warmest winter on record.

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NOAA will release its winter temperature rankings for the entire globe on March 17. I expect that we will see Earth set a new record for warmest winter on record globally, since December 2015 and January 2016 were the two warmest months in recorded history (expressed as a departure from average.) The record warmth is due to the steady accumulation of heat-trapping gases in Earth's atmosphere due to human activities, plus an extra approximately 10% bump in temperatures due to the slowly waning record-strength El Niño event in the Eastern Pacific.

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