For the second year in a row, St. Louis had its second-warmest year on record.
The region was just shy of breaking the all-time heat record set in 2012, according to the National Weather Service, with an average temperature of 61.1 degrees in 2024.
“It was one of the warmest years we've ever seen in St. Louis,” said Matt Beitscher, lead meteorologist with the National Weather Service in St. Louis.
Both Illinois and Missouri also recorded their second-warmest years.
“I think the title of the summary for 2024 for Illinois will be ‘warm, wet and wild,’” said Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford.
Loading...
Nine of St. Louis’s 10 warmest years have happened since 1990. That recent concentration of record-breaking warm years is an example of climate change in the St. Louis region, according to local scientists.
The last year also saw precipitation extremes. In Missouri, precipitation was 3 ½ inches above average, but that doesn’t tell the whole story, said Zack Leasor, Missouri’s state climatologist.
“Even though we ended up wet, how we got there was definitely a roller coaster and some flips between extremes,” Leasor said.
Missouri and Illinois saw both ends of the spectrum in 2024, swinging between flash floods and drought. In the Midwest, climate change is expected to continue this trend, leading to both deluges of rain and abnormally dry periods, according to the National Climate Assessment.
Tornadoes were also especially active in 2024 in Missouri and Illinois. Records are not yet official, but Ford said Illinois has almost certainly broken its all-time record for tornado reports, and Leasor said Missouri is close to doing the same.
In St. Louis, the National Weather Service issued 458 severe thunderstorm or tornado warnings and 59 flash flood warnings, Beitscher said.
“It was an active year for the St. Louis region,” he added. “If people are feeling fatigued by the weather, there's numbers to back that up.”
Globally, 2024 was the warmest year on record, according to both NASA and NOAA. The Earth will continue to get warmer if humans do not make big changes, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
“Global mean temperature will continue to rise as long as we continue to emit, effectively, carbon dioxide,” Schmidt said during a press conference Friday. “And that's something that brings us no joy to tell people, but unfortunately, that's the case.”
Scientists are also studying the ways climate change will affect St. Louis. Missouri Botanical Garden scientist Adam Smith has found that if humans continue down the current path of greenhouse gas emissions, St. Louis will feel more like eastern Texas by the end of the century.
“This is happening much faster than I thought, and I think most scientists thought as well,” Smith said. “I expected extreme weather to be kind of commonplace in, you know, in the 2050s or so. But it's happening now.”
