by Don Corrigan
When St. Louis saw its first fall freeze Nov. 26, residents thought the winter season had finally arrived. However, temperatures below 32 degrees have been scarce since Thanksgiving, and 2024 may be the hottest year ever.
Nationally, 2024 will be the hottest year in America since record-keeping began. The Year 2023 was recorded as hottest previously. Climate change is at work, according to scientists, and 2025 also is shaping up to be hot, hot, hot.
Jared Rennie, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told NPR after Christmas this year that records for heat have been falling left and right.
“The last 10 years, most if not all of them are in the Top 10 as hottest,” Rennie noted. “So, we’re all pretty much clustered – all the recent years are pretty much clustered as the warmest on record.”
Exceptionally warm winters have been especially hard on Midwest ski resorts like Paoli Hills in Indiana, Hidden Valley in St. Louis, and Snow Creek in Weston, Mo., near Kansas City.
Although Hidden Valley can make its own snow when temperatures fall well below freezing – the snow does not last when the thermometer goes right back up into the 50s and 60s. It’s frustrating for ski buffs and Midwest ski resort operators.
Hottest Years Ever
As 2024 now becomes the hottest year since record-keeping began in the mid-1800s, scientists say the reasons why are clear. Climate change caused by burning fossil fuels continues to add heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere.
This year, meteorologists expected U.S. weather to moderate as El Nino conditions faded and transitioned to La Nina conditions with expectations that temperatures would drop. However, temperatures did not moderate.
A June heat wave brought a string of hot days to St. Louis. June 25 became the official hottest day of 2024 when St. Louis reached a record-high temperature of 103 degrees.
It took months for a freezing temperature to return to St. Louis. November 26 marked the first time that temperatures officially dipped below the freezing point this fall in St. Louis.
The first fall freeze at St. Louis Lambert International Airport came on the morning of Nov. 26, 2024, with a low of 29 degrees. This was just two days before Thanksgiving, a holiday that witnessed snow storms in past years.
There have only been two other times since the start of the 1900s that St. Louis has seen an equally late or later fall freeze: 1902 (Nov. 26) and 2009 (Nov. 27).
Environmental Echo 