Weather
According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, the summer of 2016 is shaping up to be a warm one for the majority of the United States. Colored areas on the map above show which parts of the country have the highest odds (darkest red) for well above average warmth for the June-August period. For the seasonal forecasts, “well above average” means temperatures in the warmest third of all summers in the current climatological record (1981-2010). The outlook shows that much of the U.S. is predicted to experience a warm summer, other than the Great Plains.
Alaska seems to have the highest chance for a warm summer in 2016, along with the West and Northeast, which is no surprise after a horrible winter in the Northeast.
Nationwide, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands have the highest chances of an unusually warm summer, with probabilities between 60-70 percent. For the contiguous United States (i.e, the “Lower 48”), the chances for top-tier warmth are greatest in the West and the Northeast (50-60 percent), and smallest in the heart of the Great Plains, where the odds of well above average temperatures are the same as the odds of near-average or well below average temperatures (33 percent each).
