This Summer's Weird Weather Is the Death of Predictability

The town of Gallargues-le-Montueux, on the ride from Montpellier to Marseille along France’s Mediterranean coast, got the worst of the heat: over 114 degrees Fahrenheit, even hotter than during an infamous 2003 French heat wave. The whole country—the whole continent—sweltered through eye-popping, Aperol spritz–defying, asphalt-crumbling temperatures this past week, capping a month that European satellite data showed was the hottest June in Europe since people started keeping track. France cooked; Spain hunkered down under wildfires that burned thousands of acres.

Extreme heat, hailstorms, monstrous floods, and fires 

have made for an intense summer. But there's still 

more seasonal weirdness to come.

Meanwhile, Antarctic sea ice is melting faster than anyone predicted. The region around the Mississippi River in the midwestern United States is still dealing with floods on a scale unseen since the catastrophic levels of 1993. A heat wave in Northern California roasted tens of thousands of Bodega Bay mussels in their shells. It’s not just about blistering heat: In Guadalajara, Mexico, a freakishly large hailstorm followed by torrential rains left the mountain town digging out from under three feet of ice. And after Seattle endured a month of unhealthy air quality due to wildfires last summer, this year the city announced that it would open “clean air shelters” when the fires start again, five buildings kitted out with expensive filters, open to people who don’t have a safe place to, you know, breathe.

Read the story from Wired by Adam Rogers - “This Summer's Weird Weather Is the Death of Predictability.”