Throughout July 2011, the United States experienced extraordinarily high temperatures and many states in the Southwest felt the effects of
drought conditions. The impact of this drought on vegetation growth can be seen in the photo above. The image, from the
NASA Earth Observatory, displays vegetation anomalies across North America in July. To learn about the national weather pattern that caused such extreme conditions,
visit this NOAA page. The progression of the heatwave can be seen in these two
NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory animations that show how conditions changed throughout the second half of the month:
