Summer likely to be hotter than average, forecasters say

Continuing the recent trend of abnormally hot summers, Connecticut and the rest of New England is likely to experience aboveaverage temperatures over the next three months, meteorologists say.

The national summer forecast released last week by the Climate Prediction Center — a branch of the National Weather Service — gave at least a 50 percent chance of hotter-than-normal temperatures this summer for a broad area of the East Coast, stretching from North Carolina to Maine.

“I think it’s going to be warm, dry, tranquil — a good summer for outdoor activities, and beach weather,” said Gary Lessor, chief meteorologist at the Connecticut Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.

Lessor, who said his predictions were based on weakening effects of this winter’s La Niña, differed somewhat from the Climate Prediction Center’s models, which stated that Connecticut and southern New England has about a one-inthree chance of seeing above-average rainfall this summer.

Johnna Infanti, a meteorologist at the Climate Prediction Center, said the center’s predictions for a “hot and wet” summer were based on decade-long trends, sea surface temperatures as well as the impact of La Niña.

However, she said it did not take into account a separate forecast that the center released this week, predicting a more active Atlantic hurricane season, with a likelihood of 14 to 20 named storms this year.

Lessor, who said that Connecticut will likely not “have all that much in the way of severe weather,” added that it’s impossible to forecast the path of future storms — which can have a big impact on overall precipitation.

“That could be the one thing that could really bust a dry summer forecast,” Lessor said. “It only takes one or two of those (storms), and you quickly end up with a 5-, 6-inch rain storm, which is a month-and-a-half ” of the state’s average summertime rainfall.

The Climate Center’s forecast follows several summers of excessively hot and dry weather in southern New England, which research has shown is warming faster than the rest of the world on average.

In 2020, Connecticut experienced the hottest summer on record, with an average temperature of 72.5 degrees, the Hartford Courant reported. The summer before that, parts of the state saw scorching temperatures in July, when the heat broke 90s degrees on more than half of the days that month in Hartford.

Already this year, a heat wave that descended upon much of Connecticut last weekend threatened to break records for this time of year, and prompted heat advisories in all eight counties in the state.

Both Lessor and Infanti stressed that their predictions were based on the likelihood of above-average temperatures, and were not an indication of how hot it will get this summer.

The hotter weather is not expected to cause any severe consequences on the region’s power grid, which is at low risk of seasonal disruptions, according to a report published this month by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

The regional grid operator, ISO New England, is expected to reach peak electrical demand during the week of July 24, when demand across the six-state region is anticipated to reach 24,817 megawatts — more than triple the all-time low demand the grid experienced earlier this month, according to the report.

“We are expecting to have the resources needed to meet consumer demand throughout the season,” Matt Kakley, a spokesman for ISO New England, said in an email this week.

Mitch Gross, a spokesman for Eversource Energy, said electricity demand can increase by as much as 35 percent during summer heat waves. However, the biggest cause of outages in Connecticut remains downed trees falling on power lines.

As part of the utility’s efforts to prepare for the upcoming storm season, Eversource has pledged to spend $72 million on treetrimming in Connecticut, in addition to adding “smart switches” that help contain outages and working with local leaders to coordinate a response to severe weather.

“We’re always preparing for all types of weather, we’re always watching the forecast, we’re always watching the system to make it stronger and more reliable,” Gross said.

The Climate Center’s three-month forecast for summer runs from June through August. In addition to the Northeast, a broad area covering several states in the Mountain West region is likely to experience above average temperatures this summer, along with prolonged drought conditions.