Record heat that has been baking much of the nation for weeks is likely to have lasting effects on farm crops and consumers in the Northeast.
"It's been devastating," says Carl Shaffer, president of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau. "The lack of rain combined with close to 100-degree temperatures just takes a toll on crops."

Shaffer, who is in Washington this week for a meeting with other state farm bureau chiefs, says colleagues from Maryland, Delaware, New York and New England report similar problems.

Corn on Shaffer's 1,800-acre vegetable and crop farm in Mifflinville is showing signs of stress just as the corn is entering the pollination phase, "which is the worst possible time, (because it) shows the most impact on the yield of the crop," Shaffer says. With his snap peas a week from harvesting, "we won't have half the crop," he says.

Dairy farmers are hurting too, he says because their cows eat less and produce less milk when they're hot, and farmers may need to buy feed to replace damaged feed crops of corn and soybeans.

Consumers are likely to feel the impact because "whenever there's a shortage that translates to higher prices in the grocery store," Shaffer says.

July's recent heat spike followed a June that also set records. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that record-warm June temperatures occurred in Delaware, New Jersey and North Carolina; which had average temperatures 5 to 6 degrees above average. Seventeen other states had temperatures that ranked among their 10 warmest for June.

Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island experienced their warmest January-June period on record, while eight other states had a top-10 warm January-June period, says NOAA. The average temperature nationally in June was 71.4 degrees, 2.2 degrees warmer than the 20th century average, making it the eighth warmest June in 116 years, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Even for summer, temperatures have been unusually hot in many parts of the Northeast this month, says meteorologist John Feerick of AccuWeather.com. So far this month, Boston has been 5.3 degrees above average and New York has been 6 degrees above average.

"If you were to play that out for a month, that would be a memorable, probably record setting month," Feerick says.

Showers and thunderstorms could lower temperatures across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic this week, says Brian Korte of the National Weather Service. Humidity will rise, making it feel just as warm, Korte says.