NOAA Predicts Warmer Than Average Temperatures for the Entire U.S. Through December

Fall officially arrived with the autumnal equinox at 3:50 a.m. EDT Monday morning, but finding the colder weather more typical of autumn may be a difficult task, according to the latest three-month outlook from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.

The CPC predicts that the entire country will have warmer than average temperatures from October through December. You read that correctly: No areas of the United States are forecast to have below average temperatures when averaged over that three-month period.

(MORE: Record Highs Could Be Broken in the Southeast During the First Week of Fall)

The Desert Southwest has the highest odds of a warmer than average fall, the CPC says. That's depicted by the dark red contour in the map above, which covers parts of southeastern Utah, southwestern Colorado, much of Arizona and much of New Mexico.

A larger area from southeastern California into the Great Basin, central and southern Rockies and West Texas has a 50% or greater chance of being warmer than average through December.

The North Slope of Alaska, not pictured on our map above, has a greater than 50% chance of warmer than average temperatures from October through December as well. This region is usually chilled by Arctic sea ice, but the CPC says that won't be the case this fall.

This warm outlook for autumn follows the hottest summer on record in the Northern Hemisphere. July was the planet's hottest single month in 140 years of recordkeeping.

It should be noted that the outlook doesn't mean there won't be any below average temperatures between October and December. An individual cold front or an upper-level ridge of high pressure could lead to a brief period of colder or warmer temperatures, respectively, that doesn't align with the overall three-month pattern predicted by the CPC.

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