US heat―where are we vulnerable

From Open Mind 

My investigations suggest that the strongest influence on extreme heat is the increase in average temperature during summer; the shape of the distribution can change, and that has an effect, but change in the average value dominates. So I decided to look at how summertime heat has changed in each climate division of the conterminous USA (i.e. the “lower 48 states”), according to the data for high temperature from NOAA.

For each division, I fit a smooth curve (lowess smooth), then estimated the “summer warming” as the difference between the smoothed values now (i.e. in 2021) and at the start (i.e. in 1895). Some of them show considerable warming, in fact the northeast corner of Utah has warmed by a whopping 6.05°F:

Although most climate divisions show summer warming, not all of them do; in fact in Alabama there’s a division which shows cooling by -2.39°F:

Whichever divisions in the USA have warmed by the most, are most at risk for never-before-seen extreme heat. And here they are as red dots (bigger dots, bigger risk), with blue dots indication regions which have shown net summer cooling (rather than heating) since 1895:

Two regions stand out as being at greatest risk. First is the entire U.S. west, westward of longitude 100°W. Second is the northeast coast, northward of Washington D.C.