Yesterday NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information released their annual climate summary for the United States for 2022. Among the statistics they pointed out were the extensive coverage of drought across the contiguous US and the 3rd costliest hurricane on record due to Hurricane Ian. You can read all the information at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/national-climate-202212. For the US as a whole, we were warmer and drier than normal but did not set records for either. There were 18 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the US in 2022. The global climate summary will be released later this week.