Get the sunblock ready and prepare to crank up the air conditioning. All signs point to a hot summer ahead.
On Thursday, the Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), released its updated weather outlook for the next three months. The story is pretty much the same no matter where you live: all states are favored to see a warmer-than-average summer season.
The only difference is just how high the odds are. The darker the shade of orange or red, the more likely it is that a region will see unseasonably hot weather between June and August.
The highest chances of extra-hot weather are found in parts of Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico. Those areas have a 60% to 70% chance of hotter-than-normal temperatures.
Not far behind are New England, south Florida and much of the Mountain West, which are all likely to see above-normal summers.
The precipitation outlook isn’t as consistent as the predictions for temperature. While the Pacific Northwest and a central band of the country are favored to see less rain than usual, the East Coast, Gulf Coast, Alaska and Arizona are favored to see more.
Some parts of the country already felt like peak summer this week. Unseasonably high temperatures hit the Dakotas and Minnesota. Several Texas cities topped 100 degrees, smashing century-old records.
Sylvia Dee, an assistant professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Rice University in Houston, said with temperature records being broken “somewhere every month and every year,” heat waves like the one impacting Texas and other parts of the country should not be seen as out of the ordinary.
Climate change is likely expanding the summer season, meaning that hotter temperatures will start earlier and end later, Dee said.
“I think that this is our new normal, for sure. I think we should be prepared as Texans, but also across the country, for these changes – higher temperatures, more persistent heat events,” Dee said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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