AP Photo/Hasan Jamali
If you've felt warm this week - too warm for the end of October - you're not alone. Much of the United States is experiencing record-breaking Halloween temperatures that are expected to continue through at least Wednesday.
As Weather.com reports, the record-breaking highs will likely cover an area from Arizona to the Southeast and Midwest. Atlanta, Phoenix, Louisville, Nashville, and Cincinnati could all break records for heat this late in the year.
The record-breaking early-November weather comes after an already record-breaking October.
On Sunday alone, temperature records fell in Atlanta, Georgia (86 degrees), Meridian Mississippi (90 degrees), Birmingham, Alabama (87 degrees), Knoxville, Tennessee (83 degrees), New Orleans (87 degrees), Austin (88 degrees), Washington DC (84 degrees), Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (81 degrees), and Atlantic City, New Jersey (80 degrees) according to Weather.com's report.
Including today, the temperature has reached 90°F on 128 days so far this year at Meridian - also easily a record. pic.twitter.com/4lwjgcRgeg
- NWS Jackson MS (@NWSJacksonMS) October 30, 2016On Thursday, October 27, Phoenix, Arizona reached 100 degrees, another record.
Sorry everyone, we've hit 100 (so far). #azwx pic.twitter.com/2sUZqkh7jE
- NWS Phoenix (@NWSPhoenix) October 27, 2016Globally speaking, 2016 was already the hottest year ever recorded - and the third record-breaking year in a row. (Next year should be a respite from the cascade of historic heat records, due to La Niña.)
There's no longer any debate among researchers (and hasn't been for a long while) that these changing climate patterns are a consequence of human emissions creating atmospheric conditions not seen on our planet for 15 million years.
It's a powerful and sharp deviation from our planet's natural cycles, and we're already living through the early consequences.
All of which is to say: You might want to get used to a lot more record-breaking heat in the future.