What happened in the backyard of many Americans last month was not all representative of the experience elsewhere in the world.

While it was freezing cold and dumped snow over much of the eastern U.S., it was indeed the third warmest April on record for the planet.

The map of temperature differences from normal in April over the planet tells the story. Shades of orange, signifying warmer than normal temperatures, cover almost the entire planet. But, chilly shades of blue fill much of North America.

Minneapolis, Chicago, and Green Bay all posted one of their top five coldest Aprils on record. Many lakes in Minnesota didn’t see all of their ice melt until May’s first week, the latest on record.

Due to this tremendous cold in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes, it was likely the coldest April for the Lower 48 since 1997.

But across the pond, it was Europe’s warmest April on record. Down under, Australia notched its second warmest April on record.

The Arctic and surrounding land areas were also substantially warmer than normal, according to  the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts’ Copernicus Climate Change Service, which produced this global temperature analysis.

Overall, the planet was close to 0.9 degrees (0.5 Celsius) warmer than the 1981-2010 average during the month. It was slightly cooler than April 2016 and 2017, the two warmest Aprils on record.

While the April 2018 global temperature a notch below the previous two years, the Copernicus service said “it was in line with the upward trend of 0.18°C [0.32 Fahrenheit] per decade seen in global temperature data from 1979 onwards.”

Two particularly notable extreme weather events occurred during the month:

Both of these extremes fit the narrative of a warmer world in which hot weather is more intense and rain storms turn heavier.