Mother Nature, can you hold o on the heat?
Hot weather is inevitable, but NWS summer forecast doesn’t bode well for Yuma!
Ican’t say I was a big fan of the weather forecast for this weekend. On Friday afternoon, the forecast for today’s high was 97 degrees – same for Monday, before dipping back down to 93 on Tuesday. Did someone forget to tell Mother Nature that this is still April? We’d prefer not to see those kinds of temperatures until May!
It seems very warm, very fast, and it makes me nervous about what the summer holds.
Then, on Friday, USA Today interviewed the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for an update on summer weather predictions for the U.S.
“All signs point to an unusually hot summer for most of the U.S.,” USA Today notes.
• I really do NOT like the sound of that!
According to the NOAA, the unusual heat is most likely to hit the Northeast and … “a large swath of the West.”
USA Today then interviewed Accuweather, which gave me momentary hope for a cooler summer, expecting a milder-than-average summer across most of the U.S.
Then I read the next line: “with a couple of hot spots in the Northeast
and the Southwest.”
Talk about lifting my hopes before dashing them down again!
The reality is, we live in Yuma, and that comes with a few things we know to be always true – especially when it comes to weather.
Our winters are generally fabulous, and our summers are pretty much sizzling.
What does a hotter than normal summer really mean when on average, according to the National Weather Service, we experience 109 days over 100 degrees every summer anyway?
As for those days over 110? There are usually an average of 20 of them – and frankly, that’s plenty.
And here’s a fun fact for your next trivia night, readers. The hottest day in Yuma’s history was recorded on July 28, 1995 – at 124 degrees. The second-hottest was 123 on Sept. 1, 1950; No. 3 was 122 on June 26, 1990; and No. 4? 120 degrees on June 20, 2017 – and on five other dates, the National Weather Service notes. Those records can stand for eternity, as far as I’m concerned!
Of course, I take any weather forecast with a grain of salt. I grew up in the Midwest – weather changes there every three minutes. An April day might feature snow, ice, rain and sunshine, all in the span of a few hours, with high temperatures bouncing around all over the place.
A Yuma forecast might be derailed by a sudden rainstorm or a wind storm seemingly out of nowhere.
As for the weather right now … the National Weather Service reports our average first 100-degree day happens somewhere around April 29. So as much as I hate to admit it, Mother Nature is just doing her thing here at the moment.
But if the weather were to cool off just a bit, and let us enjoy spring just a little bit more … I for one would not object at all!