The Fire Next Time: US Records Hottest 12 Months in History

If you thought the past few weeks were incredibly hot, you haven't been imagining things. A new report states that the past 12 months have been the warmest ever in the United States since records have been kept!

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released the climate report today, which took into account skyrocketing temperatures for June as well as an extremely abnormal early Spring, which saw March temperatures surge into the low 90s in many parts of the nation.

June alone saw more than 170 all-time high temperatures broken, with thousands more records falling to the wayside as the heatwave continued into early July. The NOAA reports South Carolina and Georgia  hit all-time highs last month, with scorching temperatures of 113 degrees and 112 degrees, respectively. June was also the 10 driest month on record, as a crippling drought took hold of a large swathe of the country.

A temporary respite has arrived to some parts of the country, as a cold front brought temperatures from the mid-100s on Saturday to a more comfortable mid-80s today.

The Heat Is On: US Set to Bask in Summer Like Late Winter Temps

A large part of the US is set to bask in temperatures usually relegated to early summer as an unusually unseasonable heat wave arrives!

It will appear that some areas of the country will skip over Spring this year and head directly into the summer months, as highs in the mid-to-upper 80s will reach as far north as Chicago and parts of southern Canada this week. Most of the country witnessed very little winter weather at all this season, with temperatures breaking records across the board, in many places ten to fifteen degrees higher than during an average winter.

Yesterday, New York, experienced a warm southerly breeze that brought temperatures into the high sixties, with a high of 71 which ties with the record set in 1890 for the same day. Boston, Massachusetts, reached into the low seventies, topping the previous record of 69 set back in 1902. 

The famed cherry blossom trees in Washington, DC, are already starting to bud, weeks earlier than they have in the past, as the nation's capital is expected to see highs in the low-to-mid 80s over the next several days. The South and Midwest will also experience a host of summer-like days, which will increase the likelihood of moderate to strong thunderstorms in an area that witnessed a strong storm and tornado outbreak last week. 

  

Teetering on the Brink: World to Face Years of Social Unrest As Global Economy Falters

As the "Occupy Every City in the US" movement continues to grow, the United Nations International Labor Organization has issued a sobering report about the future stability of the global economy and how this will continue to incite the rise in civil unrest currently being witnessed around the world.

The UN think tank has warned that the international economy is on the brink of a deep new economic crisis that could cost hundreds of millions of jobs around the globe and trigger mass social unrest, the world's most powerful nations were warned yesterday with the UN report. The report pointed to the civil unrest currently being unleashed in Greece and Spain as the unhappy citizens of those nations took to the streets, sometimes in violent clashes with local authorities, to express their angers and frustration against the hardline-imposed austerity measures the governments have been enforcing. 


Similar protests have taken place in the United Kingdom, France and Portugal, as the European debt crisis continues to be of great concern, with near constant "emergency meetings" being convened to tackle the situation. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement has quickly blossomed from its origins in New York, gaining momentum and spreading to at least twenty other cities across the US. Riot police have engaged protesters in San Francisco and many politicians running for office have used the movement to try and win votes from a frustrated and angry constituency. 


All of this comes after the Arab Spring Revolution, which started last winter in Egypt and quickly spread throughout the Middle East, with violent uprisings witnessed in Syria and Libya. Similar unrest has occurred in Chile and Argentina in South America, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to express their own anger over what is viewed as an ineffectual government's inability to respond to the needs of its people. The cataclysmic Japanese earthquake and tsunami earlier this year also took a devastating toll on the already ailing global economy.


The USDA issued a stark warning this week that is almost certain to add to the possibility of unrest in the future: A startling report about the rising cost of food. The agency warned that freak weather conditions have devastated food producing areas on all continents on the planet, including extreme flooding, drought, and damaging storms. The disasters have put tremendous pressure on the global food supply, which is also coupled with the continuing rise in the cost of fuel to transport needed goods. Food riots have already taken place this year in Africa and South America. With news that the world's population has reached a record high of seven billion people, the report warns that the cost of food will see a sharp increase over the next two years, estimating that prices for basic food staples could go up by as much as 4.5 percent, a shocking increase that will without a doubt put extreme pressure on people already struggling to pay their bills and support their families.