In the midst of the state’s most destructive wildfire season, California has garnered another dubious distinction: August was the hottest month on record in California, according to a report from UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
A ferocious heat wave midway through the month — during which parts of Los Angeles County soared well above 100 degrees — helped push limits not seen since a deadly seven-day stretch in July 2006. In Death Valley, a blistering 130 degrees on Aug. 16 was thought to be the highest temperature on Earth in nearly a century.
California wasn’t the only state to reach new heights in August: Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico also saw their own hottest Augusts on record, Swain’s report said.
“You weren’t alone — not that that makes you feel any better,” Russell Vose, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said of the findings across the western U.S. Vose said the records go back as far as 1895.
Read the full story on LATimes.com.
