Cool July, Nice, Very Nice!

'Nice' is an apt description for the month of July we just enjoyed. Sure there was that one week that was cloudy and even a bit showery, but the rainfall stats were still slightly lower than my 15 year normal. Temps were about 3 degrees cooler than my normal as well. After the last couple of blazing hot summers, I'll take a cooler more typical summer and love it.

The stats played out typical across the board and there were few extremes this past month. The average observed daily high was 76.67 about three shy of the typical 79.71. the average observed overnight low was a very typical 55.35 against a normal of 56.18.

The warmest temperature I recorded was 91.8 degrees on the 28th one of just two days above 90 degrees last month the other a 90.9 mark on the 29th. The coolest temperature was a fairly nippy for July 46.2 the morning of the 14th. That was one of two sub 50 marks in July. The chilliest daytime high came on the 4th of July of all days when I was stuck at 65.3 degrees. Fortunately for all the Independence Day crazies here in the 'Couv' it was a mostly clear day and night. The warmest overnight low arrived on the 21st following a nice 84.9 degrees earlier with 63.7.

The rain bucket got five days of action but only two with any real rain the 7th and 8th with 0.15 and 0.38 inches respectively. The whole month had a fairly typical but less than average 0.70 inches measured against 1.02 as "normal".

That was just a fantastic month. My son Kyle, is in the Army and is stationed at Fort Polk, LA. He will be coming out for a visit next week and believe me he will love our cool weather even if we end up having a heat wave. He has endured routine daily highs in the upper 90s with humidity pushing the heat index well above 120 degrees! Yuck!

So with that in mind get outside and soak it up my friends; soak it up!

June was so very 'June-Like' this year.

Another month passes to the archives and this was a fairly typical June here in the Greater Portland-Vancouver region. Temps ran ever-so-slightly above average has seems to be the trend lately. With the exception of one heat wave early in the month and one bout with some heavy rain this was a very pleasant month.

The heat wave came on back to back days where I recorded identical daily highs of 95.7 degrees. Some stations in the area reported triple digits on one or both of those two days. Depending on your definition of "heat" the warm spell lasted from June 3rd through the 7th with mid to upper eighties on the other three days. 95.7 was the monthly high. For the rest of June after this warm spell, there was just three more 80 degree marks the rest of the month. The coolest temperature I recorded was a crisp 42.6 the morning of the 19th. The coolest afternoon came on the 14th when the mercury failed to reach 60 topping out at just 58.8 degrees. The warmest overnight low came on the 5th when it only cooled down to 63.1 degrees and that came off the previous days scorching 95.7 high.

Overall June produced a mere 2 days over 90 degrees for me and a total of 8 days in the eighties or higher. 11 days failed to hit 70 degrees. The temps at both ends of the day averaged about 2 degrees warmer than my 15 year establish "normals".

On the waterfront, I recorded 1.77 inches of rain well below my "normal' mark of 2.47 in June. The wettest day was 0.66 inches on the 23rd and there were 8 days with measurable rain including 2 with more than a quarter inch in the bucket.

We had some thunderstorms, a little hail and some amazing warm sunny days. It was in a word: June.

July and August are the only two "dry months" in this area and these are also the "hot" months. So far July is pretty mild as I am sitting at a San Diego Beach, comfy 73.6 degrees under mostly sunny skies. Me likes ;)