As you take this big picture, look back at 2024, Corey, how would you define this?
“Mike, you know, we can’t fully close the book on 2024 just yet. We’re still a few days away from the end of December, but we’ve got a pretty good idea about where 2024 will finish up. And maybe one good way to start looking at that is the rankings across North and South Carolina. We can look at where we stand from January through November again, just lacking the December data. And one thing that really jumps out is how warm our temperatures have been. It is on track to be the warmest year on record in North Carolina, dating back to 1895 and the second warmest year on record for South Carolina. And I know some folks, myself included, tend to judge how warm a year feels based on how hot the summer was. This year, we had some hot weather in June and early July, when some of those rains kicked in by late July and early August, that did knock our temperatures back a little bit. But the important thing to understand about our temperatures this year is that it wasn’t just the summer. It was steady, warm from start to finish, every month. So far this year, from January through November, has ranked as warmer than normal in North Carolina. So it was really an additive effect, stacking one warm month after another that’s put us in this position to potentially have our warmest year on record statewide.”
So it’s really not how warm it got, but maybe not how cold it got.
“That is a great way to look at it. And again, that was start to finish. We go back to January of last year. It was one of those winters that wasn’t we really never had much cool weather in the winter. Certainly no snow outside of the mountains last winter. And then as we got into the spring, it was a fairly early arriving spring in February. We had those flowers on the trees by the middle of the month, and really never saw much cool weather in the spring, either. So that’s kept up. And we also had that very late first freeze this fall. It took until mid to late November for some places to get their first sub-freezing temperatures of the season. So again, when you stack together that many warm months, not surprising that we’re at that point, and just looking at some of the local areas across the state, it is also on track to be the warmest year on record in places like Raleigh and Charlotte and Asheville, one of the top five warmers for places like Charleston and Myrtle Beach. So again, it has been widespread warmth and significant warmth in 2024.
What about on the precipitation side?
“So not record breaking precipitation, at least for the entire year, but we are on track for a wetter than normal year across most of North and South Carolina. That can also be a little bit surprising, because you think back about some of the big events this year, and those were our droughts. It was the early summer drought in June. It was the drought we’ve had this fall. But those have been more than balanced out by some of those pretty wet periods, including some of the big storms that we had late this summer and early in the fall. And again, when we look at some of the local areas, one of the top five wettest years on record to this point in the triad and out in Greensboro, also at an Asheville which is not surprising at all, given the amount of rain they had from Hurricane Helene.”