Meteorological Summer has ended and it was one, hot Summer here in the Quad Cities. Back in the dust bowl years of the 1930s, we had the hottest Summer of them all with an average temperature of almost 80 degrees. This year, the average temperature was 75.3°.
According to Meteorologists at Climate Matters, there are often hot spots and cold spots across the U.S. each season. But this year’s preliminary analysis indicates nearly all of the country was hotter than normal this Summer. Only 3 of the 135 metro areas analyzed had an average summer temperature below its median value. And 77 of these areas had a Summer among the hottest 10% of years in the period of record.
On the global scale, June and July were the latest in a string of record-hot months. July marked the 15th month in a row of record heat on the planet going back to more than a century of record-keeping.
2016 is on track to be the hottest year on record. That would make this the third record hot year in a row, coming off back-to-back records of 2014 and 2015.
-Meteorologist Eric Sorensen
