Another weather-related record bit the dust — or should we say cinders? — as Tuesday’s 95-degree temperature secured the summer of 2010’s title as the hottest on record in the Washington region.
The average temperature this year during June, July and August — the three months that make up the meteorological summer — isn’t official, but meteorologists at the National Weather Service were able to say with certainty that it would eclipse the record high average of 80 degrees set during the same three months back in 1980.
“I don’t have the actual number yet, but we know the record’s going to be broken,” said Chris Strong, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.
A “Bermuda high” pressure system this summer has been pumping warm air up from the southern and southwestern United States, Strong said, inflating temperatures up and down the East Coast.
“We also haven’t had as many cold fronts pushing down from the north this year,” he said.
The summer of 2010 also has matched a record set for most 90-plus-degree days so far. Temperatures crossed the 90-degree threshold 57 times from Jan. 1 through Aug. 31, tying the historical high set in 1988.
The current summer is still 10 days short of the all-time mark for most 90-degree days in a single year. But with temperatures expected to hit 90 again Wednesday and Thursday, that record may soon fall.
Strong called 2010 “the year of weather” and said the heat was a global phenomenon.
“From Moscow to Washington, it hasn’t been the hottest year at every point on the globe, but it has been the hottest year ever cumulatively,” he said.
The average global temperature from Jan. 1 through the end of July was 58.1 degrees, the hottest ever according to a National Weather Service report.
And Mother Nature has brought more than just the heat during the past 12 months.
Last winter’s snowstorms broke the record for snow accumulation in the Washington region, when roughly five feet of the white stuff settled on the nation’s capital.
Nationally, 49 of 50 states had some snow last year.
