Dozens of records fall as U.S. sees warmest Christmas ever observed
Some cities saw high temperatures climb into the 30s on Christmas Day
Thursday saw the warmest Christmas Day ever recorded in the contiguous United States.
The average high temperature across the lower 48 states was 14.39°C (57.9°F), according to the U.S. National Weather Service, which is several degrees warmer than the previous record set more than a century ago.
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A significant ridge of high pressure draped across the United States sent temperatures soaring from the Rockies to the Atlantic. The country experienced one of the greatest temperature anomalies in the world on Dec. 25.
Dozens of daily record highs fell throughout the country, where many weather stations have records dating back into the 1800s.
Childress, Texas, in the northwestern part of the state, saw a high of 30.6°C (87°F) on Thursday, beating the city’s previous record high of 25.0°C (77°F) set back in 1971. The period of record in Childress goes back to 1893.
Denver, Colorado, reached 21.7°C (71°F) on Christmas afternoon, an astounding feat for the high-elevation city where the average high on Dec. 25 sits around 6.1°C (43°F). Temperature records in Denver date all the way back to 1872.
Charlotte, North Carolina, finished the day after setting a new record high of 26.1°C (79°F), a fitting capstone for one of the city’s top-ten warmest years on the books. Observations began in Charlotte in 1878.
Given the expanse and intensity of the unusually warm air, it’s no surprise that this was one of the United States’ least snowy Christmases in recent years.
An analysis by the National Weather Service found that only 18.9 per cent of the contiguous U.S. had snow on the ground on Christmas Day this year, which is a little less than half of the country’s 20-year average for snow cover on the big day.
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