Not many 90s yet

It's unlikely many of us would complain about this, but we remain off to a pretty slow start with hot days so far this year, at least as measured by the number of days reaching 90 degrees or more. At the Raleigh-Durham airport, we've gotten there twice through June 24th, compared to an average of 9.7 times at this point in the year for the 69 years of data from that site.

Only four other years have had fewer days reaching 90 by this time, with 1983 being the only year we had not reached 90 at all by now. On the other hand, both 2010 and 2011 raced out to a fast start, with 25 such days already, and of course 2011 went on to set the record for 90-degree days at RDU with a total of 91.

1983 also served to show that a slow start doesn't necessarily equate to a slow year overall, as we ended up with a total of 51 then, which is a good bit above the 69-year average of 43 days. One other notable point about the records is how cool the 1970s were in terms of reaching 90 or higher. In that decade, there were 6 years in which we had fewer than 20 days that got that warm!

We appear to have a chance to add a couple of days to this year's total this week, with highs in the Raleigh area topping out within a degree or two either side of 90 from now through the start of the weekend, and then potentially cooler readings for a few days with the arrival of a weak front.