Scenes from the Hottest U.S. Spring Ever Recorded

You have just lived through the hottest spring in recorded U.S. meteorological history, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Reuters reports that “So far, 2012 has been the warmest year the United States has ever seen, with the warmest spring and the second-warmest May since record-keeping began in 1895 … Temperatures for the past 12 months and the year-to-date have been the warmest on record for the contiguous United States, NOAA said.”

During that time, here are some things that were happening around the United States: People went to the beach a few months early; some felt weird as they slipped off their sandals. Skiers stared up at rocky mountain faces and lamented the wasted ski season. Millions of television sets, though millions less than years before, were receiving a nightly news broadcast much like this one:

In New York, people shrugged and said, “Wow, that was a mild March,” and sipped craft beers on outdoor patios. In New Mexico, they talked about the wildfires and wondered how close to their homes they might come. In Iowa, they doubled down on the bug spray.

In Chicago, a think tank put up billboards saying that anyone who believed in climate change was a serial killer.

Here are some other things that are happening in the United States, right now: Mitt Romney, a man who says he isn’t at all sure climate change is even occurring, is now quite possibly going to become president. And while the hottest spring ever recorded gives way to what may be the hottest summer ever recorded, our Congress is stuffed to the brim with cowboy climate change naysayers and our cautious president barely dares mention the words in public.

Massive contingents of voters across the country also say they don’t believe in climate change, as wildfires sweep the Southwest, heat waves snuggle up to the Midwest, and droughts wrack Hawaii.

“I’m loving this heat! If this is global warming, I say bring it on!” somebody’s uncle will say at a BBQ, while a college sophomore home for summer break will internally debate whether or not to say something.

“The Midwest and the upper Midwest were the epicenters for this vast warmth,” Deke Arndt of NOAA’s Climatic Data Center actually did say, in an online video address. And that “meant farming started earlier in the year, and so did pests and weeds, bringing higher costs earlier in the growing season.”

Those are just some things happening in the United States, where we just had the warmest spring ever.

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