Summer Ends On The Cool Side

By Russell Russ

The summer season came to a close with August’s exit. It was not the greatest summer month on record by far and not as nice as August 2012, but all in all you could not call it too bad. It was cooler than normal and nearly two inches wetter than normal, but looking back, it did not seem overly rainy even though it did have some bad timing with rain on weekends. There was a nice string of twelve days in the middle of the month that were very pleasant. We made it through summer just about average for days at or above 90 degrees. We had two days in July with 90 degree temperatures. According to the National Weather Service, for the first time since 2002 there were no named hurricanes formed by the end of the month.

The month’s low temperature of 47 degrees was observed on August 15 and the high temperature of 83 degrees was observed on August 28. There were no daily temperature records this month and surprisingly only three days with temperatures in the 80’s. The average mean temperature was 65.7 degrees, 0.5 degrees below normal and 3 degrees below last August’s average.

The total precipitation for the month was 6.63 inches, 1.99 inches above normal. It was our fourth month out of eight this year that we have been above normal for precipitation. There were three thunderstorms observed at the weather station this month and none were particularly strong. Even though we had no hurricane affects and no big thunderstorms we did still get smacked by a heavy rain storm on August 9. Our daily total from that one storm was 3.78 inches and a majority of that came in about a three hour span. Other towns in the state got even more than us. We picked up another 1.45 inches in a storm late August 26 to early August 27. Those two rain events put us over our normal monthly rain total.

Through August this year, the total precipitation amount for the year was 40.83 inches. This is 6.20 inches above normal and 14.26 inches more than through August last year. Anyone notice how nice our lawns looked all through summer this year? They might have needed some extra mowing, but they sure were green.

Weather observations are recorded by the Great Mountain Forest Corporation at Norfolk’s National Weather Service Cooperative Weather Observer Station, Norfolk 2 SW.