UPPER PENINSULA -- Over the past five years, this July we've seen the high temperatures warmest from normal values yet.
Looking at the high temperature for every day in July of this year, and then comparing that actual high temperature to the long-term normal high temperature for that day, and then adding up all of the differences across the month, it is apparent that the highs for the first 30 days of July were 141 degrees above normal high temperatures.
It's just a complex way of saying, "it has been a much warmer than normal month!"
In 2010, the highs were 100 degrees above normal overall. However, in 2009, they were 155 degrees below normal overall; what a cold summer!
2008 and 2007 were much closer to normal, only being less than 50 degrees away from normal for the high temperatures.
This July could possibly be one of the warmest that we've seen ever.
How's the outlook for August?
Well, climatologically speaking, August should bring cooler weather based on historical data. But the forecast for the first week of August calls for more warmer-than-normal temperatures.
The long-term forecast model seems to bring in a cool down into the second week of August, but with how weak these summer disturbances can be, the confidence in that long-term forecast is minimal.
Although not completely related to the topic of this story, but still relatively important, we had severe weather push through the U.P. on Saturday. It dropped most of the heavy rainfall near Munising where they received 0.90" of rainfall in just one hour.
And there were a total of 22 storm reports across the U.P., 20 of them from damaging storm driven winds and 2 of them from hail in Delta county. The winds were powerful enough to cause major roof damage to the airport in Iron Mountain, reaching maximum gusts near 60 mph.
The severe weather threat has ended for now, although we could see more dangerous weather on Tuesday.
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