Record heat is forecast for most of the East Coast just in time for Christmas.
High temperatures above 70 degrees will stretch along the East Coast from Florida to New England on Thursday and Friday, The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang predicted, with some highs going 30 to 40 degrees above normal on Christmas Eve.
{mosads}Washington will see highs in the 70s on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, challenging records each day. Other cities will break their records as well — according to The Weather Channel, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Providence, R.I., and Burlington, Vt., had already broken their daily records by early Thursday morning.
Temperatures in Boston could break their 20-year-old records by almost 10 degrees, the Boston Globe reported, and New York’s forecast high temperature of 76 degrees would be higher than the city’s actual high on the 4th of July (75 degrees).
In all, more than 60 of the 236 weather observation sites in the mainland United States will be within 3 degrees of their record highs on Christmas Eve, according to The Weather Channel. Twenty-five states could see record highs.
The Christmas heat comes after a particularly warm December. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, there have been 2,693 record daily highs tied or broken across the U.S. for the first three weeks of the month, with more records to fall this weekend.