Mountainous states from Tennessee all the way to Maine sweated through their highest average temperature ever recorded in 2024.
Kentucky surpassed a previous heat record set all the way back in 1921. State climatologists say it was largely due to a very warm winter and warm overnight temperatures. According to their data, average temperatures in the state began rising in the early 1980s and haven’t stopped.
Shane Hollinde works at Kentucky's state climate center based at Western Kentucky University. He said many other states, including West Virginia and Tennessee, also broke heat records last year.
“Over a dozen states had — at least preliminarily — their warmest years on record,” Hollinde said. “Even the states that did not see their warmest years on record saw, in many cases, a top-five warm year."
In recent years, warmer days in the winter caused fruit trees to bloom abnormally early, Hollinde said. Then, temperatures would dip well below freezing for a few days, devastating the buds and killing their annual opportunity to create fruit.
“Will that happen again this year? Nobody knows that for sure, but obviously the longer growing seasons can be problematic for the fruit growers, especially when you get that late season frost or freeze,” Hollinde said.
One of the biggest contributors to the warming average temperatures comes from hotter nights. In other words: the daily low is getting higher.
In the summer, those hot nights put extra strain on utilities trying to supply consumers with enough energy to power air conditioners through the night — and, of course, means higher electric bills on the consumer side.
In late summer and into fall, hotter weather increases the risk of sudden droughts and wildfires. Then, when rain finally comes, it’s buckets of water at once.
“You take the flooding that occurred in far west Kentucky in July 2023: We saw a lot of washed out culverts, a lot of washed out road ways in the midst of that event,” Hollinde said. “Prior to that flash flood, conditions have been dry across extreme western portions of Kentucky. So when you go from being that dry to that wet in a very short period of time, it takes a while for the ground to really seep that moisture in.”
Those abnormally dry and then suddenly wet conditions were part of what made Tropical Storm Helene so devastating when it reached the region. That alongside record temperatures have some people questioning if central Appalachia is as well-suited for an influx of climate migration as it was touted to be.
Andrew Crosson is the CEO of Invest Appalachia, a nonprofit trying to attract investments in the region. He believes it still is.
“It's in comparison to other parts of the country.” Crosson said. “It's not an absolute statement to say that there's no challenges related to climate change [in Appalachia]. Just that those challenges, I believe, are surmountable compared with other parts of the country.”
Crosson says, amid a warming climate, there’s no doubt that flooding may be a challenge for the region. But he asserts that there's ways humans can build to control flooding or lessen its impacts.
“No place is safe. There is no such thing as a climate haven,” he said. “Every place can learn from our experience and think about ways to be better prepared to mitigate disasters and respond to them. We also still need to look at the fundamental long term data and characteristics of a place when we think about what makes them habitable.”
For 2025, there’s currently a cooling La Nina weather pattern acting on most of the United States, which Hollinde said may help keep the winter cold. But there’s a flip side: La Nina often brings stormier weather to the Ohio River Valley.
Global greenhouse gas emissions contribute to a warming climate. 2023 set a global record for emissions and United Nations scientists warn if nothing is done, average temperatures could increase by more than five degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. Most of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the region are power plants.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKYU in Kentucky and NPR.
