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Covering the Heart of Hamilton County Since 1983

Heat III

This is starting to get repetitive, but I have to talk about the heat one more time. We are out of our “monsoon” season and already into fall, yet we are still facing days of it being over 100 degrees. This is crazy, we have already broken several records; so let’s just leave it at that. I cherish fall more than any other time of the year, but it appears once again, the fall weather will last about two days and we’ll go right from a scorching hot summer, to a chilly winter. Well, chilly by my standards where it might not break into the 70s on some days.

Now, back to the records, lest I forget. Most always a record is something to be proud of, something to look forward to, but not these. No, we had a record this summer of 32 days where it was 110 degrees or higher breaking the old record of 29 days by a wide margin. August had a record high-low (or is that low-high?) average of 86 degrees. That folks, was the average low temperature for the month. On some mornings, you can wake up and it would still be 100 out, never having gotten below that all night. When we’d have a monsoon rain, the low for the day could possibly be in the late afternoon. Just another statistic or two; supposedly we had over 120 days where it reached at least 100. Now folks, that’s just about a third of the year. Not a record though, we had that back in 1989 where there were 143 days like that. Lastly, we had a record average of 96.2 for the month of August. Please, no more statistics, it’s hot and it makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it.

Speaking of the monsoon, I guess some time ago we had someone in the National Weather Service bent on being technically correct. We used to have “dust storms,” strong wind which frequently included heavy rain. Most often, they came from the southwest, picking up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. During the winter months, our storms can come from the east. The correct term for this weather shift is indeed, “Monsoon,” so about 30 years ago they decided they would call this phenomenon by its proper name. A few years ago, I even heard a few of those TV meteorologists calling these heavy winds by its technical term of “haboob,” I guess to show that they spent their school tuition wisely. Now these changes in terminology kind of confused most people, I wasn’t sure if we had moved somewhere around North Africa or the tropics where these terms are more appropriate. The last I heard, the weather service was discussing dropping those terms for something more descriptive, such as, “seasonal weather shift,” and no one has mentioned a haboob in over a year. Maybe they should poll the public and they’d find that calling them what they are, plain old dust storms, is just fine with us. Then again, when’s the last time you ever heard of a government agency try to make things easy for us to understand? In any event, there is a picture somewhere else in this paper, of one of these dust storms as it rolls in over our area.

Here’s another thing I don’t understand; it is really a rarity when it rains consistently throughout our valley. It can rain an inch in one area, yet be perfectly dry just a short distance away. This summer, we had a few storms come through and some of the outlying areas had accumulated several inches of rain over a period of a few weeks, yet the official weather station at the airport reported just over a half an inch all summer. What’s that all about? If we had a serious rain cloud over the airport and it dumped a few inches of rain there one day, are we supposed to feel good about those numbers? It’s a good year for rain here if we get over ten inches, and right now we’re in the eighth year of a drought. I would think an average reading throughout the area would be more meaningful, but then again, we are dealing with the government here.

Well, just one more statistic and that’s all, honest. The record for the last day of 100-degree temperature is October 23; let’s hope we don’t break that this year.

(Mike’s note: My buddy Don ought to try growing some hot peppers. He has the perfect conditions. Water them once every ten days - maybe I should send him a plant or two!)

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