Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Dog Days Of Summer Are In Full Force

It's the summer with NO end in sight.  At first, I thought it was unlikely we would be able to rank this summer with the record breaking summer last year, but now I'm having second thoughts.  If this summer were to end today, it would rank in the top 5 hottest summers of all time in Little Rock by average high temperature, average low temperature, and average seasonal temperature.  It's also the 2nd driest summer on record with just a little more than 1'' so far since June 1st. 



According to the averages, the heat should hit a peak this weekend, then slowly dwindle as we go into August.  The number of daylight hours is also decreasing as we head into Fall.  We'll lose almost 1 hour (57 minutes) of sunlight from the first of the month to the end of the month.  While all this sounds good, the long range outlook looks horrible.  While I don't have much faith in forecasts past 7 days, NOAA thinks August will be warmer and drier than average.  Once you get into these patterns, sometimes the only thing which will break it is a tropical system, then you have to worry about too much rainfall.


NOAA long range forecast for August indicates a good chance for above average temperatures.

NOAA long range forecast for August indicates a good chance for below average temperatures.

2 comments:

CleverGhost said...

I just had a question. You mention a tropic development in the gulf. Last I heard, it was moving NW at 15mph, with an 80% chance to develop further. Could this be the relief we need? How does it look! :)

jimmylee42 said...

That was a very interesting presentation by John Lewis about the summer so far. I don't like the track of the storm [Don],though. I want the storm to turn north when it gets into Texas.

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