Hottest Month on Record

That's my declaration, anyway, going over 110 years of data. By a smidge.

We were either amazingly lucky this past month, or folks around here were admirably careful. Or both. As far as I know there were only a couple of brush fires around Maxeys, and of course the big one near Vesta on that 107 degree day, August 10. It could have been much worse.

Your misery this past month did not go for naught. For Athens, August 2007 was not just the hottest August since "record keeping began in 1898", it was the hottest month period, edging out July 1993 by a hair. Our average daily high this month was 9 degrees higher than usual, for August.

Hold your head, here come some statistics:

We had an average daily high of 98.2 degF, approached only in July 1993 with an average daily high of 98.1 degF, and in July 1925, 96.9 degF. There were 13 days with temperatures of 100 degF or over, a record approached only in July 1925 with 10 days, August 1925 with 9 days, and July 1993 with 10 days. On two days this month my personal observations indicate that we came to within less than 1 degF of matching the highest temperature recorded, 108 degF. Officially we broke 110-year historical records on nine days. Officially we got only 47% the amount of rainfall average for August, are at 60% for 2007 to date, and 61% since Jan 2006.

Besides the record-breaking hot temperatures, in the end there were an astonishing 23 days in August at least one standard deviation above the 17-year average for that day; far above any other year except for the 26 days significantly above average in July 1993. There are usually 5 days significantly above average in August. There were no nights when the lows were at least one standard deviation before the average low.

Usually these sorts of extremes would reflect a deep La Nina in the equatorial Pacific. Not this time. We are in ENSO-neutral conditions and so we did it all by ourselves ;-) .