We are already starting to lose daylight. We are now losing an average of about one minute and 45 seconds per day. By the end of this month, we will be losing two minutes per day. But don’t worry, we still have a lot of summer to go.
It appears the unseasonably hot summer we’ve had thus far may be about to ease. And while it is inevitable that the shortening days will have an impact on our temperature, in this case it just has to do with a major weather pattern change that started this past weekend.
It had been two weeks since much of the Miami Valley received any widespread significant rainfall until Saturday.
For much of the month, a large area of high pressure was sitting just off the mid-Atlantic coast blocking any storm system from impacting the Ohio Valley. The clockwise flow around the high kept temperatures and humidity levels high. But all that changes over the weekend when a storm system was finally able to break through the blocking high pressure system. Not only that, the system moved slow enough to provide some beneficial rain to our lawns, gardens, and farms.
With the blocking high now pushed farther to the east, this will allow for a more longer-term weather pattern change for us, likely lasting into early August.
This should mean temperatures return to more seasonable or even below seasonable averages.
The latest long-range outlook from the Climate Prediction Center shows there are better chances than not for temperatures staying below average into the first week of August. That means temperatures will likely stay below 83 degrees, with is the normal temperature for the first of August.
What could be even more significant is the changes in precipitation amounts.
Much of July has been dry, and up until this past weekend our rainfall deficit was well over 1 inch for the month.
The pattern across the Ohio Valley and much of the eastern half of the country will favor increased chances for rain.
The outlook calls for above better-than-average changes for above normal precipitation. Granted, that wouldn’t be too hard to do when we get into August, as that is typically one of the driest months of the year.
The bigger question is – will the cooler weather pattern hold for the rest of the summer or will the extreme heat return. My bet is, (and educated opinion), don’t write off summer – we have a long way to go.
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