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The 30-year climate normals were updated in May with the turn of a new decade. Besides new information on daily, monthly and seasonal temperatures and precipitation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is also able to crunch the numbers to identify the likely hottest day of the year.

While the longest stretch of daylight occurs near the summer solstice around June 21, it’s usually not the hottest day of the summer. Daylight hours still exceed the number of hours the sun is below the horizon in late June through July and the incoming energy from the sun efficiently warms the ground. For many locales, the days continue to get hotter as the mid-summer approaches.

In the U.S., the summer’s hottest days usually hit earliest for the Desert Southwest. On average between mid-June and the 1st of July is the hottest period for places like Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz. As July rolls on, the monsoon contributes to afternoon cloud cover and rain that limits daytime high temperatures.

Elsewhere, much of the East and Midwest mark their hottest summer day in July before the daylight hours shrink and temperatures slowly start to cool. Meanwhile, the southern Plains have the hottest summer day in August when their soil is usually the driest.

The immediate West Coast sees the latest arrival of the hottest weather, ranging from late August all the way to early October. A deep marine layer develops a thick layer of cloud cover at night that sticks around during the day and keeps temperatures down through most of the summer. The fading marine layer by September brings more daytime heating and thus warmer high temperatures.

The new data on the hottest day of the year just gives an expected range. Not every year will the hottest day of the year fall around the same time and it’s certainly possible for the hottest day to occur several weeks earlier or later than average. A few causes for a delayed hottest summer day would be developing drought or a sluggish tropical system that hits during the traditional warmest week of the year along the Gulf or Atlantic coast and slowly lumbers into the East or Midwest.

Source: ncei.noaa.gov
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Story Image: The expected warmest day of the year based on 1991-2020 climate averages (NCEI/NOAA Climate.gov).

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Climate Normals and the Hottest Day