About 46% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought at the end of January, the most for the month since 2013. Spain lies blanketed in heavy snow on January 12, 2021, in the wake of Windstorm Filomena, Earth’s most expensive weather-related disaster of January, with $2.2 billion in damage to Madrid alone. (Image credit: Modified Sentinel-3 satellite data from Pierre Markuse) January 2021 was the seventh warmest January since global record keeping began in 1880, 0.80 degrees Celsius (1.44°F) above the 20th century average, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, NCEI, reported February 12. NASA rated the month as the sixth warmest January on record, as did the European Copernicus Climate Change Service. The Japan Meteorological Agency has not yet released its January numbers. Minor differences in rankings often occur among various research groups, the result of different ways they handle data-sparse regions such as the Arctic.