July kicked off hot, but ends on a seasonal note

July brought some of the hottest weather of the entire year, but a cool down by the tail end of the month made for overall a seasonal period. When breaking down the month into two parts, there are two different stories. The first half of the month showed an average temperature of 82.4 degrees, but the last 15 days that average dropped to 76.3 degrees.

Thanks to a ridge of high pressure anchoring across the region, the month kicked off with well above average temperatures. Of the first 18 days, there was only one day that the high temperature didn’t reach at or above average. Two of those days, the 12th and 13th, were close to breaking into the triple digits, but fell short at 99 degrees. These are the two hottest days of the year, thus far. On average, we only see three days a year where temperatures reach at or above 99. Typically, we see only two days with temperatures at or above 100, which we haven’t achieved so far for 2018.

Looking past the 18th day of the month, temperatures swung the opposite way, which dropped the monthly average quite a bit. As the ridge of high pressure retreated to the southwest, a trough of low pressure brought the jet stream further south. This funneled in the cooler, Canadian air with northwesterly flow. During this time, we saw several days with highs topping out in the low to mid 80s. On the coolest day of the month the high temperature reached a mere 72 degrees.

When considering the hot start and cool end, July ended up averaging out to a seasonal month. High and low temperatures combined only deviated 1.4 degrees above average.

When considering rainfall, we fell short, again. With a majority of the month under the influence of high pressure rain chances were few and far between. The average monthly rainfall came in 2.72″ below average. This has been no help to the dry months in recent past and the growing drought across the area.

Similar to what we saw at the beginning of July, temperature outlooks for the first half of August show above average temperatures, and below average rainfall. Of course, by the second half of the month we could see a significant weather pattern flip, again, in resemblance to July. The ABC 17 Stormtrack Weather Team will continue to track changing summer weather patterns on air and online.