Taking a tumble referring to something that is worsening is another common definition that I've read countless times in reference to something problematically decreasing, I've never heard or read "tumble" used until very recently to describe a situation in which something is rising. Have you?
"falling rapidly" would make perfect sense in many other situations. "Food storage tumbles, democracy tumbles, winter temperatures tumble", etc. But nothing is falling, all of the temperature records are rising.
Summer temperatures are so high they tumble?
This is a genuine grammatical question. I'm not trying to detract from your answer or the article itself.
I'm just very confused by this usage of the word "tumble" that I've seen at least twice now to refer to rising temperatures.