While most folks observe the Autumn Equinox as the end of summer, we in weather circles do things a little differently. In the weather business, the seasons run in groups of three months. The primary reason is easy record keeping. It just makes more sense for those who keep track of all the data.
June, July, and August are the summer months so, meteorologically speaking, the summer season ended on August 31.
First, though, let’s take a quick look at the August numbers…
It’s probably no surprise to anyone here in the Tuscarawas Valley that this summer will go in the books as a hot one. It wasn’t as hot as the summer of 2016, but still, it was much warmer than average. The chart below ranks average temperatures in New Phila over the last 21 years:
Summer 2018 ranked third warmest in recent years. Only 2016 (THE hottest summer on record) and 2010 were warmer.
Our “average” summer temperature in New Philadelphia is 70.8 degrees. This summer as a whole, then, was 2.4 degrees warmer than average.
We also have had our share of 90-degree days here in the Valley this year. So far we’ve racked up 18 days where we’ve reached 90 degrees or higher.
Just as a heads up – we’re probably not finished with the 90s quite yet. Next week will bring several days where we will have the potential to reach 90 degrees. We normally can expect about 15 90-degree days during the year.
Of particular interest is our nighttime low temperatures this year. This year’s average summer overnight lows were second warmest in recent years – topped only by 2016. And, a whopping 4 degrees above average.
The “average’ low temperature in New Philadelphia for summer as a whole is 59 degrees, by the way.
It might seem – to some of us anyway, that we had a lot of rain through the summer. That’s true in some spots across the Valley. Generally speaking, the eastern half of Tuscarawas County received more rain than the west. The northeast portion received the most rain over the summer.
Normally the Valley gets about 12.4 inches of rain through the summer. This summer came in at about an inch LESS than average. The map below shows where precipitation was less than (browns) and heavier (greens and blues) than “average” through the county (anomalies).
While, meteorologically speaking, the summer is over, our weather doesn’t magically switch to autumn with the beginning of September. The warm above average temperature trend looks to continue for September – at least the first half, anyway.
The precipitation outlook for the same period is forecast to be slightly above average through the first half of the month.
All data included in this report is official National Weather Service data originating from Harry Clever Field in New Philadelphia.
Interesting. Thank you!
Awesome! Thank you, Joe. I love reading your reports.