What an achievement. Who would have thought that we’d be alive to experience the nation’s warmest year? How exciting for each and every one of us. The average temperature was 57.1 degrees F, up from the old record, in 1998, which landed an average of 54.3 degrees F. “We had our fourth warmest winter (2011/2012) on record, our warmest spring, a very hot summer with the hottest month on record for the nation (July 2012), and a warmer than average autumn,” Jake Crouch, a scientist at the National Climatic Data Center, told NBC News. Of course, things could dip throughout the rest of December, but Crouch says the odds of this being the nation’s hottest year on record are at 99.7 percent, so you can be excused for celebrating a little early …
