Over the past year, the U.S. saw a wide array of severe weather events, and several weather records, such as rainfall amounts, high and low temperatures and snowfall accumulation, were broken.
In Oregon during the past summer, record-high temperatures were recorded in Seattle and Portland. In June, the National Weather Service in Seattle reported two consecutive days of record-high temperatures. On June 28, the NWS recorded a temperature of 108, which was the highest number ever recorded in the city, surpassing the 107 degrees recorded the day before.
On the same day, the NWS in Portland recorded a record-high temperature of 116 degrees, surpassing a previous record of 112 recorded just a few days before.
AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter told Newsweek the temperatures recorded in both Seattle and Portland were "very significant" when looking at record-breaking high temperatures across the U.S.
Over the summer, California's Death Valley had its highest daily average temperature ever recorded. The area averaged 118 degrees over a 24-hour span, according to The Washington Post. In July, temperatures hit 130 in Death Valley, just four degrees shy of the 134 recorded in 1913. However, the 1913 record has recently been disputed by climate experts.
While West Coast states saw record-high temperatures over the summer, Texas saw the opposite earlier in the year, with record-low temperatures recorded in several cities throughout February.
According to a weather event summary published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), several single-day record-low temperatures were broken in Austin, San Antonio and Del Rio.
On February 18, Del Rio saw a record amount of snowfall, with 11.2 inches, surpassing a previous 24-hour record of 8.6 inches set in 1985. San Antonio had 6.2 inches of snowfall in February, a record monthly high for the city, according to the NOAA.
From February 12 to 19, Austin had six days and 20 hours with temperatures below freezing, breaking a previous record of four days and 16 hours recorded in 1951.
In February, northern New Jersey saw a record-breaking 36.9 inches of snowfall, making it the snowiest February for the counties of Sussex, Warren, Morris, Passaic, Bergen, Hudson and Essex in state history.
On February 16, 73 percent of the U.S. was covered in snow, which was "the greatest extent on record," according to the NWS' Weather Prediction Center.
Another snowfall record was recently set in Denver. On December 10, the city had its latest snowfall of the season. "We tied the consecutive days of non-measurable snow for Denver today, and smashed (by nearly 3 weeks) the latest first measurable snow!" the NWS in Boulder said.
Throughout 2021, several rainfall records were broken across different states. In September, Hurricane Ida traveled through the East Coast and dropped 3.15 inches of rain in one hour in New York City, surpassing a previous one-hour record of 1.94 inches, which was set during Tropical Storm Henri in August.
Porter told Newsweek the one-hour rainfall record set in New York City "was one of the reasons that there was so much flash flooding and so many lives lost."
A similar record was set in Sacramento, California, in October, when the city had a one-hour total of 5.44 inches of rainfall, surpassing an 1880 record of 5.28 inches.
In August, Middle Tennessee set a 24-hour rainfall record when 17 inches hit the state. A previous record of 13.2 inches of rain in a 24-hour span was recorded in 1982.
Porter told Newsweek that the record-breaking rainfall in Tennessee "resulted in the catastrophic flash flooding" and resulted in numerous deaths.
One of the more recent rainfall records was broken in Los Angeles on Tuesday, when 2.16 inches of rain fell in the city. This shattered a previous record set in 1888, when .96 inches fell on the city in one day, according to the NWS.
Another weather record was broken during the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, when Tropical Storm Elsa, which formed on July 1, became the earliest fifth-named storm in history.
"On average, the fifth named storm of the season doesn't typically form until the end of August. The previous record was set last year when Tropical Storm Edouard formed on July 6, 2020," the NOAA said in July.
