Relentless

August 24, 2007

Note to Gus: This is what hot is.

If you live in middle Tennessee or pretty much anywhere in the southeastern portion of the country you know it been hot and dry for… well forever it seems. Just how hot and dry? Here’s a table listing the high temperature reported for Smyrna, Tennessee (KMQY) for the month of August so far:

Date High Avg Diff Precip
8/1/07 99 89 10 0
8/2/07 99 89 10 0.13
8/3/07 100 89 11 0
8/4/07 100 89 11 0.05
8/5/07 104 89 15 0
8/6/07 102 89 13 0
8/7/07 104 89 15 0
8/8/07 106 89 17 0
8/9/07 108 89 19 0
8/10/07 104 89 15 0
8/11/07 102 89 13 0
8/12/07 106 88 18 0
8/13/07 104 88 16 0
8/14/07 104 88 16 0
8/15/07 108 88 20 0
8/16/07 110 88 22 0
8/17/07 104 88 16 0
8/18/07 104 88 16 0
8/19/07 104 88 16 0.07
8/20/07 100 87 13 0.05
8/21/07 104 87 17 0
8/22/07 108 87 21 0
8/23/07 108 87 21 0
Average 104 16

It’s been three weeks since Smyrna has seen a high temperature below 100 and we’ve only had 0.3 inches of rain. The average high has been 104 or 16 degrees hotter than normal. The average rainfall for August is about 3.5 inches.

I wasn’t able to figure out exactly what the record temps were for Smyrna so I looked at Nashville’s highs as well. Why it’s roughly 4 degrees hotter in Smyrna than Nashville lately is a mystery. I’ve denoted record breaking days with a ‘*’ and record tying days with a ‘T’.

8/1/07 93 89 4 0
8/2/07 95 89 6 0.03
8/3/07 97 89 8 0
8/4/07 96 89 7 0
8/5/07 99 89 10 0
8/6/07 99 89 10 0
8/7/07 * 100 89 11 0
8/8/07 * 100 89 11 0
8/9/07 * 104 89 15 0
8/10/07 * 100 89 11 0
8/11/07 T 99 89 10 0
8/12/07 * 101 88 13 0
8/13/07 T 100 88 12 0
8/14/07 T 101 88 13 0
8/15/07 * 104 88 16 0
8/16/07 * 106 88 18 0
8/17/07 * 101 88 13 0
8/18/07 100 88 12 0
8/19/07 99 88 11 0.02
8/20/07 97 87 10 0.01
8/21/07 100 87 13 0
8/22/07 * 102 87 15 0
8/23/07 * 103 87 16 0
Average 100 12

Nashville has seen 13 record breaking or record tying temperatures this month and not even a tenth of an inch of rain.

Look I don’t know if this is global warming, a climatological fart, or what is going on, but I am so very very sick of this heat. Tomorrow the forecast high is, mercifully, expected to fall several degrees short of 100 for the first time since July, and the long term forecast actually has a high temperature of upper 80s forecast for next Thursday. God, I hope this is true.

Update: I just stumbled across this article from the Tennessean from the 8th of August. The title is “Sure, it’s hot in Nashville, but it’s been even hotter”. Well that’s no longer completely true. While we haven’t broken the all time record of 107 degrees, we hit 106 and we’ve now had 30 consecutive days over 90 degrees and we’re still going. The old record was 20 consecutive days. We’ve also broken the record for most consecutive days of temperatures over 100 degrees with 7. Out of the last 18 days, only three have seen high temperatures lower than 100 (99, 99, 97).