How hot is it?

By Staff
Leada Gore, Hartselle Enquirer
Anyone who’s been outside at all this summer will tell you it’s been a hot one.
And while temperatures have hovered around the upper 90s, officials with the University of Alabama in Huntsville said this summer barely makes the top 20 in the list of hottest summers in the past 114 years. Summer 2006 lands at 19 on the list.
But before you think you’ve been imaging that sweat running down your brow, this summer does rank as the hottest since 1954.
Morgan County’s average maximum daily high temperature for the past three months topped 91.4 Fahrenheit for the first time since 1954, according to Dr. John Christy, Alabama’s state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric science at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).
The average high temperature for the Morgan, Madison and Limestone county area will be some 92.1 degrees F. While that makes summer 2006 the hottest in some 50 years, it falls short of the record set in 1925 when the average high was 95 degrees F.
It also shouldn’t be taken as a sign of global warning, officials said.
“It is worth noting that every summer from 1930 to 1937 was warmer than this summer,” Christy said. ”On average, summer high temperatures were noticeably warmer in this area from about 1920 straight through to the mid 1950s than they have been in the past three or four decades.”
The area’s record high temperature of 111 degrees F occurred in July 1930, in a summer which saw 28 days hit temperatures at or above 100 degrees F. Temperatures at the Huntsville International Airport hit 100 degrees only twice this summer.
North Alabama’s coolest summers in the past 114 years were 1967 and 1992. The area’s 10 coolest summers are all after 1960.