It might be cruel to remind everyone of how sunny it was last month -- considering it snowed in parts of Northeast Ohio overnight -- but it wasn't just warm in March; it was historically hot.

March 2012 was the hottest March on record for Northeast Ohio, according to the National Weather Service.

The average temperature was 51.4 F, Meteorologist Karen Clark said.

"That's 13 degrees above the average, which is pretty extraordinary," she said.

The previous record was an average of 49.5 F, which was set in 1946.

The month also included an uninterrupted streak of 10 days that were 70 F or warmer.

This too was a record for March in Ohio. Before that, the longest streak was seven days, which was set in 1945.

Ohio's unseasonable warmth was the rule, not the exception, last month throughout the country.

The average temperature across the United States was 8.6 degrees above the 20th century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Every state in the country experienced at least one record warm daily temperature in March, totaling 15,272 warm temperature records broken, according to AccuWeather. More than 6,000 of those records were set in the midwest.

Clark said persistent southwesterly winds brought warmer temperatures from the south throughout March, though nothing completely explained the streak of unseasonable warmth.

Clark added that the record-setting March did not necessarily guarantee a balmy spring or hot summer.

"It's not a real good indicator of the type of summer we're going to have," she said.