Summertime and the living is easy
So said George Gershwin when he wrote the song, “Summertime.” This is the season when we take a break from life and relax a bit. Perhaps a vacation or a weekend at the lake allows for an easier pace to life. Some prefer just to stay close to home and catch up on some of the things we have put off doing. Whatever you decide, the weather will play a role in your plans, and the last two weeks of June were more likely spent inside trying to stay cool, that is if you had air conditioning. If not, the heat and humidity made life miserable.
The Uniontown area had nine days of 90 degrees or better beginning on June 21. June 28 was the only day that did not see 90 or higher.
For the month of June, we averaged four degrees above normal. The rains on the first of July brought a cool front from Canada that lowered both temperatures and humidity to more comfortable levels.
Not only was it hot here, but record temperatures were prevalent throughout the Northeast and Middle Atlantic regions. Europe was also hot, with Paris recording 104 and Madrid 102. Even England had some temperatures near the 100-degree mark. Portugal had an all-time heat record for June of 116, and the scorching heat brought on the forest fires in Turkey. Globally extreme heat kills over 480,000 people annually, surpassing the combined total from floods, earthquakes, hurricanes and storms. Scientists say the main cause of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Last year was the planet’s hottest on record, and this year looks to be in the running for a repeat.
Of course it’s a great time to close down and lay off thousands of workers whose only job is to help provide research to determine just how much of this climate news is real or imagined; from the CO2 station in Hawaii, to the National Hurricane Center to many of the understaffed weather service offices.
For many people, all of this talk is scary and hard to grasp, and then there are the deniers who love confusion. The timing of these firings could not be worse, and shows how little thought went into these decisions.
Like it or not, something is going on, and perhaps a better course for the future would be to embrace it and ready ourselves for the next industrial revolution, which will involve new thinking, new industries, new technology, new sources of power; maybe even new ways to stay cool on those hot sticky summer days.
Looking ahead, the Climate Prediction Center calls for both temperatures and rainfall to be above normal for July in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Average July afternoons are mid-80s and morning lows in the low 60s. Record highs for the month are 102, and the record low was 37. Rainfall averages 4.34 inches. There should still be plenty of nice summer days to make for some easy summer living. Don’t forget our mountains are usually 5-8 degrees cooler than lower elevations and just a short drive away. Hopefully with the above forecast, we may be in better shape than last summer when we had 29 days of 90 or better and little or no rainfall.