Frying on the Fourth of July
Happy Fourth of July, everybody. I hope you are all staying cool, especially everyone in the muggy Midwest.
It is freakin’ hot. According to weather.com, the high in Iowa City today was 99ºF at 1:45 p.m. (For those who’ve been metricated, that is 37.2ºC.) And that was just the temperature; I have no clue what the heat index was (probably around 103º or 104º). The forecast low tonight is 75º — an ideal high during the day.
Hot. Damn hot.
It gets this way sometimes, but I do not think it has been this hot since I returned to the Hawkeye State. I cannot remember the last time I experienced heat like this in Iowa. It reminds me of the ungodly desert heat at my uncle’s place in La Quinta. (Someone once told me it felt like standing behind a jet engine.)
The trend this year is above normal temperatures — sometimes way above normal. A warm winter (grrr!) gave way to a warm spring and now a warm summer (which everybody hates). According to yesterday’s CRG, 2012 could be the warmest year in Iowa history if the trend continues.
As hot as it is now, though, the article mentions the epic heat in the summer of 1936 and provides a link to this fascinating story on wunderground.com, which seems to be a much better weather site than The Weather Channel’s. A complete contrast with the brutal cold early that the year, the summer of 1936 was the hottest ever recorded in the US. High temperature records were set in almost every state east of the Rockies — records that still stand. Most amazing is the fact that the overnight low in Lincoln, Nebraska on July 24-25 never dropped below 91º, “perhaps the warmest night ever recorded anywhere in the United States outside of the desert Southwest.” (The picture of people sleeping on the lawn of the Nebraska State Capitol is priceless.) On July 25, the temperature in Lincoln reached 115º.
Stay cool out there. If you are in Iowa, it is probably not a good idea to even light sparklers. The grass is so dry it may start on fire.
It is freakin’ hot. According to weather.com, the high in Iowa City today was 99ºF at 1:45 p.m. (For those who’ve been metricated, that is 37.2ºC.) And that was just the temperature; I have no clue what the heat index was (probably around 103º or 104º). The forecast low tonight is 75º — an ideal high during the day.
Hot. Damn hot.
It gets this way sometimes, but I do not think it has been this hot since I returned to the Hawkeye State. I cannot remember the last time I experienced heat like this in Iowa. It reminds me of the ungodly desert heat at my uncle’s place in La Quinta. (Someone once told me it felt like standing behind a jet engine.)
The trend this year is above normal temperatures — sometimes way above normal. A warm winter (grrr!) gave way to a warm spring and now a warm summer (which everybody hates). According to yesterday’s CRG, 2012 could be the warmest year in Iowa history if the trend continues.
As hot as it is now, though, the article mentions the epic heat in the summer of 1936 and provides a link to this fascinating story on wunderground.com, which seems to be a much better weather site than The Weather Channel’s. A complete contrast with the brutal cold early that the year, the summer of 1936 was the hottest ever recorded in the US. High temperature records were set in almost every state east of the Rockies — records that still stand. Most amazing is the fact that the overnight low in Lincoln, Nebraska on July 24-25 never dropped below 91º, “perhaps the warmest night ever recorded anywhere in the United States outside of the desert Southwest.” (The picture of people sleeping on the lawn of the Nebraska State Capitol is priceless.) On July 25, the temperature in Lincoln reached 115º.
Stay cool out there. If you are in Iowa, it is probably not a good idea to even light sparklers. The grass is so dry it may start on fire.
