7 AM Thursday Update. Both the NAM and GFS say 86 for the high today. It will be a struggle to hit 90 today. I'll keep you updated here and on www.twitter.com/katv_weather
As we told you in the previous post, we are now tied with 1980 for consecutive 90 degree days in Little Rock.
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| 2010 #1 with 58 days |
Little Rock hit 92 degrees Wednesday which exceeded the model forecast highs. Why did this happen? In my opinion, it's the location of the official observation station at Adams Field. The rainfall deficit here is almost 8 inches, while just a few short miles away at the North Little Rock airport the high was 89 and they have a surplus for the year of a little more than one inch. This huge contrast has been evident most of the summer as NLR has gotten in on more of those heavy isolated showers and storms. The wet ground keeps the temperature a bit lower than if the ground is dry. A dry ground along with dry air will easily heat during the day.
The computer models are forecasting highs Thursday around 87 degrees so it's still very possible to hit 90 at Adams Field, but it's going to be close. We need one more day to break that all time record for consecutive 90 degree days. I'll keep you updated here and on twitter Thursday.
One last thing I found very, very interesting. When looking at this record, July 19th, 1954 was a very important day in Arkansas weather history. A retired meteorologist from the National Weather Service office in North Little Rock brings up this point in a special section of their website. CLICK HERE TO READ IT.
I have done some research this Wednesday evening and found the high temperature that day was only 82. This day ended a streak of 42 days of 90 degree temperatures and began a new one the next day which was 53 days. In other words, this one day prevented a 96 day stretch of consecutive 90 degree days. Unbelievable. Looking at the actual weather maps that day shows .11'' of rain for the 24 hours prior to 1:30 AM July 20th. A front was located to the north of the state and it appears from the 500 mb chart that a weak area of low pressure aloft located west of the state may have helped generate the precipitation. Here's the surface chart from July 19, 1954.
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| Surface Map from July 19, 1954 |
4 comments:
Clipper Zone
Little Rock has experience one of the hottest summers in history and will go down in the record books. Even if we don’t break the record of consecutive 90 degree days, this summer will be remembered for years to come.
An interesting observation to note is that Little Rock has not been below 70F since June, 7th, until yesterday morning. That marks the longest stretch of low temperatures remaining at or above 70 degrees in the history of Little Rock. The previous record was held by the 75 days that spanned from July 1 to Sep. 13, 1938. Temps failed to drop below 80F on 7 nights during the recent record breaking stretch. 1980 was hotter in terms of high temps, but this heat wave was little different with overnight lows being exceptionally warm. I contribute that to the very humid air and high dew points that have been persistent all summer. We still have a shot at another record. The hottest summer by average temp ever. The recent cool weather may impact that and we may come up short.
Weatherclipper
oh what a bummer we hit 90 degrees again i guess just more proof of global warming, and for you doubters if you think its not happening your just kidding yourselves.
I thought I would never say this, but I'm ready for a blizzard. I like summer, but this is just too hot. Finally it is starting to cool. Hurricane Danielle has streghtened a little more than expected~a category 4. I think that the North Atlantic is finally starting to release it's anger.
we need some rain Todd in central arkansas these 20 to 30 percent chances are just not cutting it, we need a good steady rain for at least one day can u help us out Todd?
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