TheClimateChanger

Yes, they haven't updated the spreadsheet since July 1, so I suspect they've swapped out most by this point. Just wondering if there's been any cool bias? I would argue, yes, but I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this. It looks like the stations that were running on legacy sensors did much better for heat early on this summer versus the stations that had swapped in the new sensors. I wonder if we are going to have to temper our expectations for heat. Might be difficult to beat some of these 90s-2020s records if the sensors were reading hot. We've grown accustomed to breaking 100-150 year old records left and right. May not be the case moving forward. It look decades of climate warming before the ASOS HO-1088 hygrothermometer was regularly beating out the extremely warm biased HO-83. Even to this day, many summer records still date to that short era from about 1986-1995 (summer has substantially less natural variability, so biases have an outsized impact on the rankings). Might be a similar story for these new Vaisala sensors.

Lots of brown/gray dirty stuff showing up aloft on satellite across the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys. I guess this is smoke from somewhere?

What are you guys seeing with the new ASOS Vaisala 155E temperature and dewpoint sensors? They seem to read lower for max temperatures than the HO-1088, no? Also many more 100% humidity observations than previously? They rolled these out in most areas, but I haven't seen any sort of analysis to see how they compare to the older readings. When ASOS was rolled out, there was a lot of comparative analyses.

What are you guys seeing with these new temp/dewpoint sensors? I haven't seen much discussion on this, but they seem significantly cooler than the legacy sensors. And MUCH higher on humidity, at least in the overnight/mornings. All of a sudden, it's 100% humidity all the time at night around here. Never used to see ASOS throw up a 100% humidity before. Current Events

These new temperature sensors seem to be helping a lot with the colder lows: Current Events I was wondering why PIT went from being several degrees warmer for lows than me to about the same. Would never see all these 100% humidity observations with the legacy sensors.

Starting to see some drought showing up finally. I've only received about 1/2 of an inch since late July. Needless to say, lawns are quite brown and dormant, with some premature leaf droppage.

I think people need to temper their expectations a bit. It's not supposed to be nonstop 80s and 90s all summer long. I was reading P. Vanderbilt Spader's weather record for New Brunswick, New Jersey. He installed self-registering max/min thermometers on February 1, 1857, with periodic records back to 1847. And it looks very similar to those old Newark records you shared earlier this summer. I'm not sure what's going on here, but the summer temperature and precipitation regime looks more like New Brunswick, Canada than New Brunswick, New Jersey. Looks cold and wet. Very weird. Weather Record for New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1847-1890 - Google Books

Thanks for the update, Don. Akron, Ohio saw its driest month on record. Not just driest August, but driest of any month. Looking over the numbers, it looks like Ohio had either its driest or second driest August on record. Pennsylvania looks like a top 5 driest August as well. I didn't look at any other states, but it looks like dryness prevailed from Missouri to Maine.

Nice graphic. Just curious - Is this data from NCEI? What is the source for the last 30 days? I just took a look at precipitation data from all CoCoRAHS, Coops, and WBAN sites, and I think August will be among the Top 5 driest for Pennsylvania. It looks like it was either the driest or 2nd driest for the State of Ohio. The official NCEI values are scheduled for release next Tuesday, I believe. Average of 269 well-separated stations with no missing data is 1.94 inches. Average of 417 stations with not more than 5 missing days is 1.90 inches. This actually gives a pretty good estimate of what the official tally will be, so it looks like the statewide average will come in under 2" for the month, although gridding could make it close. There are only 4 Augusts with a statewide mean under 2" (1930, 1957, 1995, and 1951).

Rankings are also misleading these days too, because of so many recent years being anomalously warm. I suspect the CONUS finishes in 12th place for summertime mean. However, if it does so, it would be warmer than EVERY summer before 2006, except for the dust bowl juggernauts of 1936 & 1934. For those of us who were around in the 1990s, those seemed like insurmountable numbers. Not even scorching summers like 1995 and 1988 could surpass those. And so the 12th place finish really seems to undersell just how hot this summer was. In the 1990s or early 2000s, if someone came out and said this summer the CONUS would be hotter than every year except 1934 & 1936, everybody would recognize that is a VERY hot summer with massive cooling demands, etc. The media would be running constant stories about the heat and ramping up hysteria about climate change and a new dust bowl. That doesn't happen anymore. With that said, 1936 still holds the #1 slot (now tied with 2021). I think it's only a matter of time before we see a summer (or summers) that far surpass anything previously observed when you look at how many recent summers are in the top 10 nationally. It won't take much more warming to get us to that point.

If August comes in exactly at the 1991-2020 mean, summer would finish up around 73.22F. If August comes in at +0.2F, then the final summer tally would be 73.29F. If August comes in at +0.5F, the final summer value would be 73.39F. All of these are 12th warmest between 2018 (73.48F) and 2002 (73.16F). So I doubt it will finish in the top 11. Likely range 12th-15th, with 12th being most probable IMO. To put it another way, August can finish anywhere between 0.2F below and 0.7F above the 1991-2020 mean, and we'd still probably wind up in 12th place.

Should finish around 12th place IMO. The last PRISM update had us at +.22F for the month of August compared to 1991-2020 mean. Even if NCEI comes it at -0.3F below the 1991-2020 mean, we'd still have a summer mean of 73.12 (13th place). To drop to 15th place, August would need to come in around -0.5F below the 1991-2020 mean, which would give a summer mean of 73.06F. I don't think PRISM would be off that significantly, especially with the sign of the departure.

I haven't looked at any other states, but I suspect this will go in the books as the second driest August for the state of Ohio with a chance for #1. Precipitation is a bit more difficult to track as a statewide average, but it was very dry.

While summer is coming to an end on a bit of a disappointing note with very chilly temperatures to close out August, it will still go in the books as a fairly hot summer overall. Provisionally for August statewide means, I have the following: Michigan: 67.3, 42nd warmest Ohio: 70.8, 58th coldest Indiana: 71.9, 52nd coldest West Virginia: 70.1, 56th coldest Kentucky: 75.1, 59th warmest For meteorological summer, I calculate the following provisional statewide means: Michigan: 68.1, 19th warmest Ohio: 73.3, 10th warmest Indiana: 74.4, 22nd warmest West Virginia: 72.6, 6th warmest Kentucky: 76.6, 13th warmest

Down to 32 at Zelienople Municipal AP AWOS: https://forecast.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KPJC.html

For the statewide averages, I expect Pennsylvania to check in around 67.9F for the month of August, and West Virginia around 70.0F, both of which are around 50th coldest August of record (since 1895). Meteorological summer should finish around 70.5F for Pennsylvania and 72.5F for West Virginia. That would finish up as 14th warmest for the State of Pennsylvania (since 1895) and tied for 7th warmest for West Virginia (since 1895), with 1901, 1949 & 1952. If anything, I think this projection might be slightly low for August but should be within about 0.1F of the final summer tally IMO, as I would have to be more than 0.3F off for August to be more than 0.1F off for the summer as a whole. Although the statewide numbers are so crowded that even a tenth of a degree can swing things a few places as evidenced by all the multi-year ties.

After a generally hot and humid summer, August is closing out on significantly cooler than normal. August mean should drop around 0.9F with the last 3 days factored in, with the 3-month summer average dropping around 0.3F (0.9F/3). Looking at some long-term "threaded" climate sites, PIT should finish around 73.9F, which would drop us from a 3-way tie for 11th (1877, 1880) to a 2-way tie for 16th place in the threaded record (1878). At Wheeling, summer should finish around 73.4F, dropping from a 2-way tie for 5th (2010), down to 8th place. Note - lengthy gap here from the mid 50s to late 90s... not a whole lot of hot summers in that stretch but at least a couple are missing that can be seen in the PIT and MGW threads (e.g., 1991 & 1995). Morgantown should finish around 73.9F, dropping from 7th place to a 3-way tie for 11th place (2005, 1991).

I'm still under 1/2 of an inch for the entire month.

Wow! Looks like the Army Corps is going to be a lot of dredging for a fourth consecutive autumn. Hopefully, we don't see the salt intrusion problems of recent years in NOLA.

How did this work out? Akron, Ohio was supposed to get 3.5" of rain from the "biblical storm" and 4-5" over the 2 weeks. Instead, it will be the driest month on record - not just the driest August, the driest of ANY month.

On the plus side, it will be the hottest summer on record in the UK. The UK Met Office needs to brace for some unhinged comments from social media users. For some of these guys, 1976 will always be king no matter how hot recent summers are. You can already see some of the trolls from across the pond recycling the same nonsense as the trolls here about airport tarmacs and jet engine blasts: I suspect the CONUS will slot in around 12th place overall, and warmer than any pre-21st century summers except 1934 & 1936, but I guess that's a big victory for the trolls these days. I've already been called out by the usual suspects for not providing a list of record lows. In reality, I'm just trying to take a break from the trolls!

This has just been a brutal stretch though. Here is where we were for summer to date through the 15th of the month: And here is where we are now projected to finish:

IEM is maybe a little overdone here, but very impressive dry pattern. This seems to be the trend these days with dryness August-October, after spring/early summer deluges.

In 2025, one can just make something up, post it on social media, and others will believe it. Obviously, the Carr Fork Lake number is erroneous, and the 2012 occurrence at Greenup looks to be an error as well. In 1986 and 1946, clearly a number of stations observed lows in the 30s in Kentucky. In August 1986, nearly 1/4 of all NWS stations in the State had a low in the 30s. And this is just official cooperative stations, not backyard thermometers or mesonets or whereever that is sourced from. Kentucky's highest point is 4,145 feet. Those elevated valleys in the east can radiate well.