Hottest March on Record
Last month was the hottest March ever recorded for the contiguous United States — and not by a small margin. Federal data shows it exceeded previous records by the largest gap ever logged for any month, which is the kind of statistical anomaly that stops being reassuring to explain away. A forecast El Niño is expected to push temperatures higher still in the months ahead.
March being warm doesn’t make every summer extreme, and climate operates at scales that resist single-month narratives. But the margin matters. When records aren’t just broken but shattered, it suggests the baseline is shifting faster than the models anticipated, or that the models were right and we’re simply further along the curve than most public discourse has caught up to. Either interpretation leads to the same place.