As record temperatures swept through the Midwest and trees
bloomed early across the Northeast, lots of talk focused on what
an unusually warm start spring was having. The folks at the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have now
crunched the numbers, and found that it wasn't just unusually
warm—March was bizarrely hot. With 15,000 record high
temperatures set in the US, it was far and away the warmest
March in the nation's history, and only a single month—January
of 2006—was as far off from the monthly average. Only one of the
48 contiguous states (Washington) was below normal, and a huge
slice down the center of the country was bathed in bright red in
NOAA's map, indicative of record high temperatures. The heatwave
was partly responsible for moving the first quarter of the year
into the top slot of the US record books. The high temperatures
also kicked off an unusually early spring cluster of tornadoes
in the Midwest. Neither NASA nor NOAA have managed to do the
global monthly averages yet, so it