Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Washington Summer Heat Record Clinched By Huge Margin

Midnight Update: It's official; the daily high/low of 96/71 goes into the record books to close out the Summer of Simmer 2010, subject to final quality control by the National Climatic Data Center.

5:25 PM Update: The final high temperature of meteorological summer comes in at 96°, confirming the new record. Updated charts to follow shortly.

5 PM Update: The hourly temperature has returned back to 94°, so the high of 95° is likely to hold, unless there was a higher reading between hours.

4 PM Update: The temperature of 95° at 4 pm clinches the higher summer average of 81.3°, barring an almost physically impossible breakdown in the low by midnight. This smashes the old record for hottest summer of 80.0° in 1980 by an unprecedented margin. The current monthly average also rises, to 80.1°, tying for the 9th hottest August.

3 PM Update: The temperature is 94° for the second consecutive hour.

Original post:
As of 2 pm today, the Washington high/low temperatures so far of 94/71 have broken the hottest average summer temperature record by an unprecedented margin of at least 1.2°. One more degree increase on the high, which is quite likely, would raise that to 1.3°. Normally, even individual monthly average temperature records are broken by only a tenth of a degree, so breaking the 3-month record by 12 or more times that amount is even more remarkable. This is the 52nd day of the summer with a temperature of 90° or higher and the 57th of the year.

Some of the records set this summer:
  • Hottest summer
  • Hottest 3 consecutive months
  • Second hottest of any 2 consecutive months
  • Hottest individual month (tied)
  • Hottest June
  • Hottest July (tied)
  • First time any 3 months in the same year averaged 80° or higher
  • First time summer average daily high exceeded 90°
  • 5 individual daily highs

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nope, no global warming here. Just move along everyone, nothing to see here...

CapitalClimate said...

Indeed. There are, of course, some other possible factors at work, including an increased urban heat effect. That mostly affects the overnight low, however.

Toby said...

Must be the Urban Heat island!

Phew! For a while there I thought Congress might actually have to address global warming!!

CapitalClimate said...

Apparently Congress thinks they've already addressed the issue with Inhofe's Igloo.

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