HOUSTON – As the heat turns this week and feels-like temperatures reach triple digits, the extreme numbers shouldn’t take anyone who has lived in the Bayou City for any length of time by surprise.
Since 2000, we’ve seen remarkable trends indicating a warming world, especially in Houston.
Record highs keep getting set
Consider this: If you look at the days in June, July and August, 92 in all, we have set record high temperatures 34 times since 2000.
In fact, record highs of 107 occurred in June 2013, and it hit 109 in August 2011.
How many record lows have occurred?
None in June or July. Five have hit in August. I looked into that, and four of those were Aug. 13 through 16, 2004, when Hurricane Charley moved into the west coast of Florida and then moved north.
The broad circulation would have given us a northeasterly flow of cool air and very dry air (all the moisture was in Florida).
As I always say, dry air is easy to cool down and heat up, and I imagine we had some pretty pleasant August days as others put up with a hurricane.
Hot summer trends
Climate Central research shows the hot summer trend since 1970. Simply put, it keeps going up.
It’s not just a trend toward more hot summer days. If you look at the consecutive days of 95 degrees and hotter, that also skews warmer for Houston over the last five decades.
Finally, not that it’s any comfort, but the whole world is hotter. The chart below shows that the last five years have been the hottest years on record.
So, find a way to keep cool, not only this summer but looking ahead.