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- Written by: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
A top-10 warm August capped off a distinctly hot summer, as the U.S. saw its third-hottest meteorological summer on record.
Last month was also marked by several extreme rainfall events across the nation that resulted in historic flooding, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
Climate by the numbers
Meteorological summer
For meteorological summer (June 1 through Aug. 31), the average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 73.9 degrees F, 2.5 degrees above average, ranking as the third-hottest summer in 128 years.
Summer temperatures were above average across most of the contiguous U.S. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Texas each saw their second-warmest summer on record, while seventeen additional states across the West, South and Northeast saw their top-10 warmest summer on record.
The summer precipitation total across the contiguous U.S. was 8.18 inches — 0.14 of an inch below average — ranking in the middle third in the historical summer record. Precipitation was above average along the West Coast, parts of the Southwest, Midwest, lower Mississippi Valley and northern New England.
Meanwhile, precipitation was below average across the Great Plains and portions of the East Coast. Arizona had its seventh-wettest summer on record as Nebraska saw its third-driest summer.
August 2022
The average temperature for August across the contiguous U.S. was 74.6 degrees F, 2.5 degrees above average, and ranked as the eighth-warmest August on record.
The contiguous U.S. monthly average minimum temperature was record-warm for the second month in a row during August. California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington each ranked warmest on record for August nighttime temperatures.
The average precipitation for August in the contiguous U.S. was 3.04 inches (0.42 of an inch above average), ranking in the wettest third of the climate record. Extreme rainfall events during the month of August contributed substantially to the record-wet August for Mississippi — as well as the third-wettest August for Nevada and Louisiana.
However, a few states stayed quite dry last month, with Nebraska seeing its second-driest August on record and Kansas seeing its seventh driest.
Year to date (YTD, January through August 2022)
The average U.S. temperature for the first eight months of 2021 was 55.4 degrees F — 1.5 degrees above the 20th-century average — ranking in the warmest third of the climate record. Florida had its fourth-warmest such YTD on record and California saw its fifth warmest.
The nation had 19.68 inches of precipitation for the YTD, 1.03 inches below average, ranking in the driest third of the January–August record. California ranked driest YTD on record, while Nebraska ranked fifth driest and Nevada ranked seventh driest for this YTD.
Other notable climate events
Multiple historic flooding events struck: Several extreme 1,000-year flooding events occurred across the U.S. in August. On August 2, parts of southern Illinois were drenched by 8–12 inches of rain in a 12-hour period. An area south of Newton, Illinois, recorded 14 inches of rainfall over the same period. On August 5, Death Valley National Park received 1.70 inches of rain, an all-time 24-hour rainfall record for the area, resulting in substantial flooding and damage to roads and vehicles, temporarily stranding park visitors and staff overnight.
On Aug. 22, some parts of Dallas, Texas, saw more than 13 inches of rainfall within 12 hours. Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a disaster for 23 Texas counties, including Dallas, after storms caused damage and devastating flash flooding.
Drought conditions improved overall: According to the August 30 U.S. Drought Monitor report, 45.5% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought, down about 5.9% from the beginning of August. Drought conditions lessened or were eliminated across portions of the Southwest, southern Plains, central Mississippi Valley, Great Lakes, parts of the Northeast and Puerto Rico.
Drought conditions expanded or intensified across portions of the Northeast, central and northern Plains, the Northwest and Hawaii.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of Australian cattle dog, Doberman pinscher, German shepherd, Great Pyrenees, hound, husky, pit bull, Rottweiler, shepherd and treeing walker coonhound.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
Female pit bull terrier
This 2-year-old female pit bull terrier has a black and white coat.
Shelter staff said she is a gentle girl with a loving personality who came into the shelter needing some tender loving care.
She is in kennel No. 9, ID No. LCAC-A-3856.
Male pit bull terrier
This 1-year-old male pit bull terrier has a gray and white coat.
Shelter staff said is a playful young dog who does well on a leash and loves fetch. He will benefit from training.
He is in kennel No. 10, ID No. LCAC-A-3855.
Male hound mix puppy
This 6-month-old male hound mix puppy has a short brindle coat.
Shelter staff said he is very playful with a lot of energy, and he loves toys. “He is extremely treat motivated and has shown he is eager to learn all the cool tricks you could teach him.”
He is in kennel No. 15, ID No. LCAC-A-3916.
Female treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher puppy
This 2-month-old female treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher has a short tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 16a, ID No. LCAC-A-3924.
Female treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher puppy
This 2-month-old female treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher has a short tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 16b, ID No. LCAC-A-3925.
Female treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher puppy
This 2-month-old female treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher has a short tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 16c, ID No. LCAC-A-3926.
Female treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher puppy
This 2-month-old female treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher has a short tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 16d, ID No. LCAC-A-3927.
Male treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher puppy
This 2-month-old male treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher has a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 17a, ID No. LCAC-A-3921.
Male treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher puppy
This 2-month-old male treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher has a short tan and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 17b, ID No. LCAC-A-3922.
Male treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher puppy
This 2-month-old male treeing walker coonhound-Doberman pinscher has a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 17c, ID No. LCAC-A-3923.
Male Rottweiler-Australian cattle dog cross
This 5-year-old male Rottweiler-Australian cattle dog cross has a short tricolor coat.
He is in kennel No. 18, ID No. LCAC-A-3942.
Female pit bull
This 2-year-old female pit bull has a short brown brindle coat.
She is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-3918.
Female treeing walker coonhound
This young female treeing walker coonhound has a short black brindle coat.
She is in kennel No. 22, ID No. LCAC-A-3776.
Female German shepherd
This 1-year-old female German shepherd has a short black and tan coat.
She is in kennel No. 24, ID No. LCAC-A-3780.
Male German shepherd
This 2-year-old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
Shelter staff called him a “handsome sweet dude who is motivated by treats and does well walking on a leash.
He is in kennel No. 25, ID No. LCAC-A-3870.
Male German shepherd
This 3-year-old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 26, ID No. LCAC-A-3929.
Female husky
This 1-year-old female husky has a cream and black coat.
She is in kennel No. 27, ID No. LCAC-A-3893.
‘Poppy’
“Poppy” is a 4-month-old female Great Pyrenees with a short white and gray coat.
She is in kennel No. 30, ID No. LCAC-A-3790.
Male German shepherd
This 1-year-old male German shepherd has a black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. LCAC-A-3930.
‘Piper’
“Piper” is a young female Great Pyrenees with a short white coat.
She is in kennel No. 34, ID No. LCAC-A-3789.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
- Details
- Written by: Robert Sanders
BERKELEY, Calif. — Checking off one of its key goals, the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, imaged its first exoplanet — a young, gas giant planet six to 12 times more massive than Jupiter orbiting a star 350 light years from Earth.
“The JWST cameras were designed to take photos of exoplanetary systems, and we just demonstrated that everything works like a charm,” said astronomer Paul Kalas, an adjunct professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-investigator for the telescope’s Early Release Science, or ERS, program focused on exoplanets. “The planet was first discovered in 2017 by ground-based observatories, but JWST is able to capture the planet’s warm emission at longer, infrared wavelengths.”
The star, HIP 65426, is very young and hot, having recently completed its planet-forming stage. It lies in the southern constellation Centaurus.
“This planetary system is only 14 million years old, and these new data will advance our knowledge of how planets form and evolve,” Kalas said.
The young planet, which is designated HIP 65426b, is several thousand times fainter than the star, so sophisticated cameras aboard JWST — the Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, and Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI — had to artificially eclipse the starlight using coronagraphs in order to capture the images.
This is the first image of an exoplanet in mid-infrared wavelengths — that is, wavelengths greater than 5 microns (a millionth of a meter, or a thousandth of a millimeter).
“Obtaining this image felt like digging for space treasure,” said team member Aarynn Carter, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz who led the analysis of the images. “I think what’s most exciting is that we’ve only just begun. There are many more images of exoplanets to come that will shape our overall understanding of their physics, chemistry and formation. We may even discover previously unknown planets, too.”
Carter is first author of a paper describing the results that has been submitted for publication. A non-peer reviewed preprint is available online.
The ERS exoplanet team was tasked with evaluating how well the NIRCam and MIRI work in suppressing starlight, so it pointed JWST toward a known exoplanet. The team’s analysis showed that JWST is so sensitive that it could detect young Saturn-mass planets, a capability unmatched by any other astronomical observatory.
Much of the expertise needed to design these cameras and science programs originated from sophisticated, ground-based efforts, such as with UC’s Lick and Keck observatories, Kalas said.
A former UC Berkeley graduate student, Marshall Perrin, worked to commission JWST and trained with Kalas and professor James Graham at both Lick and Keck more than a decade ago. Perrin is also a member of the ERS exoplanet team, as are current Berkeley astronomers Keming Zhang and Marta Bryan.
Webb is an international mission led by NASA in collaboration with its partners, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency.
Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY LIBRARY
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — A Lake County Library card is more powerful and even easier to get than ever before.
This small but mighty card unlocks a world of print resources at the four branches of the Lake County Library.
In the last three years, the library has made even more resources available with your card.
There are three options to get a library card.
Residents can visit their local library branch, can call their local branch over the phone, or can visit the library website and apply online.
The address of the library website is: http://library.lakecountyca.gov.
For many years now, a Lake County Library card provides free access to materials from the Lake, Sonoma, and Mendocino county libraries.
Altogether that's access to over a half a million physical items. Lake County alone owns over 120,000 items.
The entire Lake County collection contains more than 7,000 DVDs, as well as books, audio books, and music CDs. Patrons can search the library catalog online and request to pick up materials at their local branch.
This year, thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, IMLS, you can receive books by mail.
If you are homebound and aren't able to make it into your library branch you can sign up for the Books by Mail service. This service allows you to receive library materials through the United States Postal Service, at no cost to yourself.
Each Lake County Library branch has free Wi-Fi and public internet computers. Thanks to an IMLS grant, your library card also allows you to check out Wi-Fi hotspots and bring home the internet. You can also borrow a Chromebook, which is a small laptop, to take home.
The Lake County Library continues to provide a wealth of digital resources, and these have been expanded as well. A library card provides digital access to over one million eBooks, eAudiobooks, streaming movies, television shows, eMagazines, digital comics, and music. These digital items can be accessed on computers, smart phones, tablets and compatible televisions.
A library card also allows access to many online resources that provide job training, skill building and creative development.
Video learning sites like LinkedIn Learning or Coursera can help residents prepare for a new job. Creativebug offers virtual arts and crafts classes at the beginner to advanced level.
For kids, digital resources like BookFlix or ABCmouse help with early learning. These premium resources are all free with a library card.
Visit your local branch during September and take advantage of the array of free resources available.
Lakeport Library
1425 N. High St.
Telephone 707-263-8817
Hours: Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Redbud Library
14785 Burns Valley Road, Clearlake
Telephone 707-994-5115
Hours: Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Middletown Library
21256 Washington St.
Telephone 707-987-3674
Hours: Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Upper Lake Library
310 Second St.
Telephone 707-275-2049
Hours: Tuesdays through Fridays, noon to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Visit the Lake County Library Website at http://library.lakecountyca.gov.