Maze: So far, there have been no 100° days recorded at RDU this summer

Climatologically speaking we think of summer as the months of June, July and August and so far for 2018 we have not seen any 100° days officially at RDU. The way this summer has been going, it’s looking more and more likely we will escape the summer without seeing 100 degrees!

We have had some big heat, don’t get me wrong, it’s been hot. So far we have seen(as of writing this article) 35, 90°+ days at RDU with the warmest being 98° seen on July 17th.

Part of the reason our summer heat has not been quite so bad is the position of the jet stream. We have seen an ever-present trough of low pressure in the eastern part of the country for much of the month of July and with this pattern in place, it’s really hard to see excessive heat generated.

With a pattern like this, we have seen numerous cold fronts come in bringing a break from the heat and in a few instances even a decent drop in humidity!

At the latter part of July we had a deep trough of low pressure set up which delivered tropical moisture into the state producing widespread rains with many days in the 80s and even 70s for highs!

Now that we are in the month of August, a month that is notorious for big heat in North Carolina, it appears the excessive heat may not be attainable. Forecasts we monitor daily from the Climate Prediction Center continue to indicate temperatures could trend below normal. The graphic indicates that the areas highlighted in blue have a greater than 50% chance for below normal temperatures through the remainder of August. Areas to our north across the Northeast and the Great Lake States shaded in orange have a greater than 50% chance for above normal temperatures through the remainder of August. This is a forecast of what temperatures could do in the weeks ahead. We will see if this pans out but if this pattern holds I cannot see any 100° heat being generated for us.

Once we make our way into the month of September it becomes a lot less likely we would see a high temperature of 100° at RDU. It’s not unusual to see a summer without a 100° high here in Raleigh…here’s an excerpt from one of our Ask Greg questions from WRAL.com

…“In a historical sense, it is not at all unusual to go through a calendar year without recording any readings of 100-degrees or higher. In fact, looking through 128 years of data for Raleigh, we fail to reach 100 or more about two out of three years, or 66% of the time, as 84 of those 128 years did not include any days that hot. The top 5 years for numbers of 100+ readings were 1999 (12 days), 2012 (9), 2011 (9), 1952 (8) and 2007 (7)."

As a side note, if we do maintain this pattern in the upper atmosphere going into the fall during the heart of the hurricane season, it would be helpful in keeping hurricanes away!