ASSOCIATED PRESS • March 8, 2024
Across much of America and especially in the normally chilly north, the country went through the winter months without, well, winter. In parka stronghold Portland, Maine, the thermometer never plunged below zero. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that the winter of 2023-2024 was the warmest in nearly 130 years of record-keeping for the United States. This is just the latest in a drumbeat of broken temperature records, national and global, that scientists say is mostly from human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas. It was the warmest U.S. winter by a wide margin.