This Summer Shaping Up as One of Warmest CREDIT: Drought via
Shutterstock As the month draws to an end, it's clear that July
continued the trend for unusually warm weather for the United
States. Temperatures in June and the first week of July
qualified this summer so far as one of the top-three hottest
summers in the continental United States since 1950, said Bob
Smerbeck, a senior meteorologist at Accuweather.com. "I think it
has a chance to get into the top three whether it is the top one
remains to be seen, we still have the rest of July and August,"
Smerbeck told LiveScience. An article in the news suggesting
this month was on track to surpass the all-time record set in
July 1936 is incorrect, Jake Crouch, a climate scientist here at
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, told LiveScience in an
email. That statement, which appeared in USA Today, was the
result of an inaccurate interpretation of weather data, he
wrote. [Dry and Dying: Images of Summer Drought] "However, July
has been warmer than average, an