Florida Has its Warmest April on Record

Florida residents, if you thought April 2015 seemed ridiculously hot, you were right--April 2015 was Florida's hottest April on record, said NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) on Tuesday. The contiguous U.S. experienced its 17th warmest April since 1895, with the most notable heat in the Southeast U.S., where Georgia and South Carolina also experienced top-ten warmest Aprils on record. No portions of the country were notably cooler than average. The year-to-date period January - April ranked as the 20th warmest year-to-date on record. It was a relatively wet month, ranking in the wettest one-third of the historical record, and portions of the Central U.S. experienced notable relief from drought conditions. The U.S. Climate Extremes Index (USCEI) for the year-to-date was 40 percent above average and the 15th highest value since 1900. The warm West and cold Northeast temperature pattern during January-April contributed to the much above average USCEI, with the components that measure both warm and cold daytime and nighttime temperatures being much above average. The USCEI is an index that tracks extremes (falling in the upper or lower 10 percent of the record) in temperature, precipitation and drought across the contiguous United States


Figure 1. Statewide temperature rankings for April 2015. Florida had its hottest April on record, and Georgia and South Carolina also had top-ten warmest Aprils. Cool weather was noticeably absent. Image credit: NOAA/NCDC.

Record heat in Florida, Cuba, and Puerto Rico
According to NOAA, April 2015 was the hottest April on record at both Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and the second hottest at West Palm Beach and Naples. Almost every day in April had warmer-than-normal temperatures, with no more than three days of cooler-than-normal temperatures at any of the main climate sites. The heat peaked on April 26 with the hottest day in southeast Florida in almost six years, when high temperatures reached the mid to upper 90s at official recording stations all across the area. One official station at Royal Palm Ranger Station in the Everglades hit 100 degrees, the first time this has happened in South Florida in the month of April. The heat was even more impressive in nearby Cuba, where Havana set its all-time temperature record that same day with a sizzling 37.0°C (98.6°F); Holguin had the second-highest temperature ever recorded anywhere in Cuba: 38.7°C (101.6°F). The main cause of the April heat was a persistent and strong high pressure area which not only brought warm, subtropical air into the region but kept cold fronts from making southward progress down the state. April's weather was more like what normally occurs in June, and the hot and windless conditions helped warm up the waters where Tropical Storm Ana formed, leading to the 2nd earliest landfalling tropical storm in recorded U.S. history.

Remarkable heat also affected the Caribbean during the last week of April, with San Juan, Puerto Rico setting daily record highs on six consecutive days, April 25 - 30. This ties their record for most consecutive days with a record high, set June 21 - 26, 1983. San Juan hit 94°F four times during the last week of April; prior to this April there were only twelve times in recorded history that the temperature hit 94 or above in April (including two readings of 95 and one of 97.)

Wunderblogger Steve Gregory discusses how a typical late spring weather pattern has emerged over the U.S. in his Monday afternoon post.

Jeff Masters