SUMMER 2023: NOT THAT HOT!

Meteorological Summer (June-August) will go into the record books as pretty ho-hum this year. Temperatures and precipitation were both pretty close to average! It was the coolest summer since the middle of last decade, however.

In terms of rainfall, some areas had more than others, but generally the area had between 11-16 inches for the summer. The season started quite dry but finished with a water-logged month of August.

How was our Summer Forecast? Not bad. Here’s where we put the odds of different outcomes:

It ended up being a little warmer and wetter than expected, but not by much.

LOOKING AHEAD TO SEPTEMBER/THE AUTUMN SEASON

You probably know by now that it’s going to get quite hot over the next week. In fact, the pattern looks pretty warm compared to average through at least the first half of the month. This strongly tilts the odds in favor as the month ending up was warmer-than-average. It should also be a notably drier month when compared to August.

90s in early September are not that unusual and we typically have more 90s in September than the other warm season “shoulder’ month, May.

Warm Septembers have become the norm since 2015.

September 1 begins Meteorological Fall…will the whole season be warmer than average? That seems unlikely. Often in Autumns featuring an El Nino in the Pacific, a warm September is followed by a much different pattern in October and November.