• March's warm weather broke a lot of records. Science has confirmed what we all already knew (and feared?), last month was the warmest since 1895, which is as far as the record goes back. "The average temperature of 51.1°F was 8.6 degrees above the 20th century average for March and 0.5°F warmer than the previous warmest March in 1910," explains the research report. In addition, every single state had at least one day of record breaking temps and over the 31 days,  7,755 daytime records and 7,517 nighttime records were broken across the country. Alaska, on the other hand, not included in this tally because it does not fall in the contiguous U.S., had its 10th coldest on record, contributing to the climate change extreme weather theory. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of records broken, here's a data visualization from the NOAA. [National Climate Data Center]

All this wacky weather will kill old people. Speaking of unexpected temperatures, some bad news for the elderly. It's not exactly heat that will do it, but odd temperature variability could lead to mortality for elderly with chronic disease. "The effect of temperature patterns on long-term mortality has not been clear to this point. We found that, independent of heat waves, high day to day variability in summer temperatures shortens life expectancy," explains researcher Antonella Zanobetti. "This variability can be harmful for susceptible people." Consider both January and March had abnormal warmth, we'd bet the Summer has some variance in store for us, which doesn't sound good for our senior citizens. [Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences]