Why Summers May Never Be the Same
The globe’s warmest months on record redefined summer for many Americans.
It felt like the opening minutes of a disaster movie.
This summer, Trevor O’Donnell, 64, had been reading the cascade of news about extreme weather: wildfire smoke covering the country, deadly flooding in unexpected places, record-breaking heat. To Mr. O’Donnell, a tourism executive who splits his time between Palm Springs, Calif., and Douglas, Mich., American life now resembled a scene straight of out a Hollywood film, when the hero’s family is making breakfast as alarming television news bulletins play in the background.
“There’s an ominous feeling,” he said. “You notice that something’s fundamentally off. It just struck me that what we’re experiencing right now is so similar to that prelude.”
Globally, average temperatures broke a string of monthly records this summer, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: June was the warmest June, July the warmest July and August the warmest August. September was also, by a record margin, the warmest September, the European Union climate monitor said this week. As humans continue adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, record-breaking heat will become even more common, as will extreme weather events like droughts, wildfires and floods.
This summer alone, floods ravaged Vermont and upstate New York; the seawater in South Florida was so hot it felt like a Jacuzzi; choking smoke from vast Canadian wildfires enveloped the skies over the Northeast and Midwest. Even the mosquito population in Texas suffered. In cities like New York and Chicago, a wave of summerlike temperatures flowed into September and October.
This was the summer that Marianne Gingher, 76, welcomed her son, his wife and their two small boys to live with her in Greensboro, N.C., while they got settled in the state for his new job.
“I kept saying, ‘You’re North Carolina boys now. Children play outside — we’re going to the park,’” she said. “And I’d walk out the door, and the heat would slam me.”
The state was setting records for […]
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