A Lot to Talk About.

I'm finally back.  I was camping down in Southern Ohio and Tennessee for all of last week.  While I was gone some interesting things have happened and now since I've been back a lot of interesting things have also happened.  Let's get down to business.  I first want to talk about the record heat in July.  According to the National Weather Service, July 2011 was the hottest July on record with an average temperature of 79.8 degrees, just shy of 80 degrees.  This beats the old record of 79.5 set in 1921.  We also had the second highest average high temperature on record of 91.0 degrees (to put this in perspective, we all thought last July was hot, well last July's average high temperature was only 88.6 degrees), only behind July 1955 (91.2 degrees) by 0.2 degrees.  July 2011's average low temperature was 68.6 degrees, which is the second highest average low temperature on record, behind July 1921 by a half of a degree.  July 2011 also had 22 90 degree days, which is the most on record for any given month in the entire recorded history of Fort Wayne.  This puts this year's total of 90 degree days at 29 which is more than last year.
     I also wanted to talk about the upcoming weather pattern.  According to the National Weather Service, there may be a pattern change coming up as the Central Plains ridge retrogrades westward.  When the ridge shifts westward, a wetter, cooler, stormier, pattern may come about in our area.  A northwest flow aloft will cause storms to ride up and over the ridge right into our area and along a stationary front that is supposed to form over our area early next week.  This could bring heavy rain events and widespread drought relief across the area.  This new pattern may also cause an uptick in the hurricane season activity.  Even with a trough building over our area, expect still above normal temperature for most of the next two weeks.  I will have another update tomorrow.