A fourth warmest winter for the U.S. as South Carolina cools

Image by Flickr user dr-photo

Warming weather trends are back in the general news headlines after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its winter weather update and notes that this winter was the fourth warmest on record.

The administration writes that, the "contiguous U.S. temperature during the December-February period was 36.8 degrees, 3.9 degrees above the 1901-2000 average — the warmest since 2000."

Indeed the average was the fourth highest behind three other winters in the 1990s, and this year builds on the overall warming of the contiguous United States, rising some 1.7 degrees per century.

However, in South Carolina the trend has been a little different.

Our winter was still warm (the 13th warmest for our state) but the overall trend for the Palmetto State has been slightly cooling since 1896, having fallen 0.3 degrees per century period

I'll stop there and point you to NOAA's release for oodles more context and data (though it has no South Carolina specific tidbits).

Of course, locally cooler air in South Carolina won't help us much in the Lowcountry with the sea level rise that's been happening.

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