Lots Of Summer Left But Shorter Days Becoming Noticeable
The Valley just had 3 straight days with highs around 90 degrees and the pattern for much of August looks like a warmer-than-average one so there is still plenty of hot Summer weather ahead of us. That said, we are now over 6 weeks removed from the solstice (the longest day of the year) and the daily reduction of daylight is accelerating. We are about to enter what I like to call "Solar" Autumn, or the 3 months of the year in which the days get "shorter" at the fastest rate.
Since the "longest" day of the year, we have about an hour less daylight to enjoy as of August 6.
For many, the change may be most noticeable in the evening hours and the earlier sunsets will really become apparent by the end of this month. Hard to believe that we are less than 3 months away from the start of Standard Time and 5:00-5:15 sunsets.
Total daylight right now is still north of 14 hours but with a loss of 2 minutes and 30-40 seconds per day late in the Summer and early in Fall, the numbers really start falling fast.
The sun is getting a bit lower in the sky and sunrises and sunsets are edging closer due due east/west as we head toward the equinox. The yellow line is where the sun rises and the dark orange is sunset.
On a shorter time scale, it's pretty amazing how daily record high temperatures have outpaced record lows over the last several years. This is just 11 years of data but I suspect looking at 20 or even 30 years would yield similar results. 
PRECIPITATION CHANGESOur region sees more precipitation than it used to. Partly a natural cycle? Yeah probably. But partly because the planet is warming? Yeah probably. Warmer air can "hold" more water vapor. For each degree of warming, the air's capacity for water vapor goes up by about 7 percent. An atmosphere with more moisture can produce more frequent precipitation events and more frequent intense precipitation events. 
The 30-year average annual precipitation in Youngstown was 36.80" in 1988 and is now 40.17".MORE SNOW??It's counter-intuitive to think that climate change/global warming means MORE snow. But snow totals have been trending up in recent years. People think of the 70s as a super snowy decade but recent decades have been quite a bit snowier. 
When we look at the snowiest winters on record in Youngstown, just look at how many winters since 2000 are in the top 20:
Should you be worried? I am not going to tell anyone how to feel. That's entirely up to you. Scientifically, the impacts of climate change are unlikely to be as threatening to lives and property in our region as in some parts of the planet. Regardless of what you think about climate change, we should all be good stewards of the earth. Will buying a hybrid or recycling more or eating fewer animal products make a dent in this global phenomenon? No. But making different choices can't hurt either. 
July was the warmest since 2012 in Youngstown. Nowhere near the top of the record book but significant nonetheless. 
We were not alone. Many parts of the US had a warmer-than-average July. Temperature anomalies: 
August will get underway with fairly seasonable weather through Friday. After that, we are going to get back into the kind of pattern that produced the hot weather in early July. The first half of August looks quite hot...the second half may feature more frequent cool shots. Overall, odds favor another warmer-than-average month. The highest departures from average should end up being in New England. 
While a *WET* month does not seem likely, odds are favoring a month with more frequent rains than July. That, combined with the bouts of wet weather that we had in late July, means that we should avoid widespread drought conditions this summer. 
By the way, August has been one of our more benign months in recent years, at least as far as temperatures go. 2016 was the exception; it was the 7th warmest August on record. Otherwise, temperatures have been pretty close to the average (combining highs and lows) of 68.1. In fact, 2017 and 2013 were exactly average. 
