LibertyBell

Not having lived during the 50s, Newark matches my experience of 1993 and 2010 being my two hottest summers during the time I've been alive. It's curious EWR is so much closer to my experience than LGA is lol.

Tony what was the high on August 16, did it stay in the 90s?

meh that 102 peak and 8 straight days of 95+ from 1944 really stands out, when you compute the average highs of both how do they compare? Incidentally both 1944 and 1988 are part of the 11 year solar cycle (as were 1955, 1966, 1977, 1999, 2010).

But what if it's a 12 year cycle from the 1944-1955 period that repeated during the 1991-2002 period, do you think the circulation pattern itself could be cyclic and if so, when it happens again the extreme heat will be even hotter than it was back then?

Incidentally where is Hightstown Chris? I had never heard of this town until you started posting this but they seem to have a treasure trove of data going back to the 1940s, including some of the best historically hot summers like 1955 which leads the pack with 8 days of 95+ on that list!

wow I wish I was alive then, this must have been absolutely amazing-- look at that 96 high on August 16 with 0.88 of rain, who said it can't get hot and rain a lot at the same time ;-)

Chris, isn't the consecutive 95+ streak at Central Park from 1944 at 8 days? That's why I listed 1944 as the start of the super hot cycle that ended in 1955. 1944-1955 is twelve years and 5 of those summers were extremely hot. It mirrors the 12 year period from 1991-2002 which also had 5 really hot summers. Maybe climate change will add more to this intense heat and the next time we get this very hot 12 year cycle climate change superimposed on top of this 12 year cycle will break the records that were set in both those cycles? The records I'm looking at are: 1944 8 consecutive 95+ days NYC 1948 3 straight days of 100+ at JFK 1949 5 days of 99+ at NYC (the 8 days of 100+ at EWR was already exceeded in 1993, in the next very hot cycle). 1953 a 12 day and a 7 day super heatwave at NYC with 4 days of 100+ evenly split between the two superheatwaves, which included the highest temperature ever recorded in September at 102. 1955 16 95+ days at NYC and 14 95+ days at LGA Second hot cycle 1991 39 90+ days at NYC 1993 39 90+ days at NYC (tied 1991), 3 straight days of 100+ at NYC during a 10 day super heatwave, 9 days of 100+ at EWR, including 5 in a row (beat the record from 1949 during the last very hot cycle) 1995 July had our area's highest heat index on record (at LGA) followed by the driest August on record with widespread wildfires 1999 Two super heatwaves of 9 and 8 days length in July, exceeded 100 areawide and set records for number of 90+ days in July 2002 Two super heatwaves of 8 and 7 days length in July and August

Maybe there was some cyclical factor that made the period from 1944-1955 exceptionally hot? And maybe that cyclical factor repeated itself between 1991 and 2002? Note that both periods were 12 years in length...... I don't know about the other summers but I can list the exceptionally hot ones from both 12 year periods: 1944 1948 1949 1953 1955 and 1991 1993 1995 1999 2002 hmmm both 12 year periods had 5 extremely hot summers.....

Specifically 1953 and 1955. I added more to the post Tony. Although we can also add in 1948 and 1949 which were exceptionally hot too. 1949 8 100+ days at Newark only exceeded in 1993 with 9. NYC 5 days of 99+ at NYC never matched or exceeded (and 4 days of 100+ in 1953). Incidentally, the great 1953 heatwave and historic number of 95+ days in 1955 at both NYC and LGA hasn't been matched since either. I agree that climate change is changing our climate, but I don't think it's making our extremely hot days any hotter, it's increasing the mins and making it wetter. Otherwise why is the 95+ record at both LGA and NYC still from 1955?

I wasn't alive in the 50s when those historic heatwaves occurred in 1953 and 1955 that haven't been matched since, but I was alive in the 1990s especially years like 1991 and 1993 when it was hotter here with less rain and more sunshine. I feel like our springs have gotten cooler and wetter since then. Central NJ has always been a heat paradise lol. Incidentally, the great 1953 heatwave and historic number of 95+ days in 1955 at both NYC and LGA hasn't been matched since either. I agree that climate change is changing our climate, but I don't think it's making our extremely hot days any hotter, it's increasing the mins and making it wetter. Otherwise why is the 95+ record at both LGA and NYC still from 1955?

Yes I would like to see a traditional 40s and 50s style heat ridge. I think climate change is messing with our ridges and making it more wet and less hot here in the summer so maybe we can reverse that now.

it's different dry vs wet. I have a really bad mold allergy problem and I sneeze too much to be able to sleep if the air is really moist.

we really need to build houses like they do in the southwest, instead of these brick ovens people live in.

it happens even in some of our hottest summers like July 1993, right before the historic heat came in.

I hope it overpowers the ocean and we hit 100+ down here too. the sea breeze needs to be deported....

This is absolutely amazing, I wonder if I can match or exceed my 105.6 reading down here from July 2011. I'll take a picture of my digital thermometer if it happens, just like I did back then.

Yay I want to see 40c on Long Island! I hit 105.6 on July 22, 2011.

why, this weather really sucks. fortunately humans can modify their own climate and I have my space heater running at 83 degrees since last night (yes I boosted it a degree because 82 made me feel cold last night.) The 83 degree setting on my space heater compensates for the lack of sun and also eradicates this excessive moisture at the same time, killing mold. It feels really nice here with a nice dry 83 degree heat (actually it's 85 since the heater only stops when my room temperature hits 85). My rule of thumb is I can tolerate temperatures in the 60s when there is no wind and the sun is out. But if there is no sun and it's windy my heat needs to stay on. The space heater nicely compensates for the lack of sun and nukes the moisture in the air too. My indoor humidity is only 44% right now.

Yes, and 106 readings I got in my car driving through Queens in 1993, 2010 and 2011. I agree that there are some parts of the city that are hotter than others, so if we can use some thermometers, we should be able to use them all.

1806 - A total eclipse of the sun was viewed from southern California to Massachusetts. (David Ludlum) 1972: Agnes was first named by the National Hurricane Center on June 16, 1972: It would go on to make landfall between Panama City and Apalachicola, Florida, on the afternoon of June 19. Hurricane Agnes would later cause catastrophic flooding in the mid-Atlantic states, especially Pennsylvania. Agnes caused over 100 fatalities. Did Agnes make landfall near JFK too? wow this must have been absolutely amazing, was totality reached in NYC?

why will it be wet in the long range Tony? Hot means dry most of the time, any *wet* would be confined to inland areas where scattered tstorms occur but these do not reach the coast most of the time.

It doesn't really factor in when NYC and JFK don't factor in. The 40s and 50s were quite a bit hotter. I know you like to use micronets but perhaps if we had micronets in the 90s they would have been even hotter. Hell, I'm going to start using my car thermometer lol. Back in 1993 my car thermometer registered a temperature of 106 degrees driving through Queens which was only matched in 2010 and 2011. Why don't we wire in everyone's car thermometers into the micronet that way we can cover the entire region?

Yep I did so too

Yes it's a complete shock and people had to go to storm shelters just like they would for a tornado. Satan's Storm, what a name! Burnt cotton fields requires some intense heat.

this *surface temp* thing belongs in a category all its own https://www.science.org/content/article/move-over-death-valley-these-are-two-hottest-spots-earth Death Valley holds the record for the highest air temperature on the planet: On 10 July 1913, temperatures at the aptly named Furnace Creek area in the California desert reached a blistering 56.7°C (134.1°F). Average summer temperatures, meanwhile, often rise above 45°C (113°F). But when it comes to surface temperature, two spots have Death Valley beat. A new analysis of high-resolution satellite data finds the Lut Desert in Iran and the Sonoran Desert along the Mexican-U.S. border have recently reached a sizzling 80.8°C (177.4°F). More than 11,000 World Meteorological Organization manned and automated weather stations measure air temperatures in the shade, in ventilated hutches about 1.5 meters above ground level. But vast swaths of Earth's surface, especially in remote regions, lack these instruments, leaving them out of the record books. SIGN UP FOR THE AWARD-WINNING SCIENCEADVISER NEWSLETTER The latest news, commentary, and research, free to your inbox daily For the past 2 decades, a pair of Earth-observing satellites equipped with NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)—an instrument that measures everything from ozone levels to phytoplankton abundance—have scanned the entire globe, day in and day out. In areas without cloud cover, MODIS measures the infrared heat emitted by surfaces to take their temperature—essentially, how the soil, dirt, or ice would feel if touched. Surface temperatures tend to run hotter than the air above, especially on sunny days when surfaces are heated both by air and the Sun's radiant energy. "Think of your car sitting in a parking lot on a summer day and how the handle burns your fingers. Or the sand burning your feet at the beach," says ecologist David Mildrexler of the conservation organization Eastern Oregon Legacy Lands. In 2011, Mildrexler and his colleagues gleaned from MODIS data that summer temperatures routinely soared above 60°C (140°F) in arid regions, with a high of 70.7°C (159.3°F) in Lut in 2005. Since that study, software improvements have sharpened MODIS's resolution from 5-kilometer pixels to 1-kilometer pixels, bringing even hotter spots into focus. Lut hit its all-time high in 2018, a record the Sonoran, in a weird coincidence, matched the next summer, Yunxia Zhao of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues report this month in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. But with its "consistently hot footprint over a large area," says Mildrexler, who was not involved in the present study, "the Lut Desert has really emerged as the hottest place on Earth." Zhao and her colleagues uncovered other superlatives. The maximum temperature swing in a single day was 81.8°C (147.3°F), from –23.7°C (–10.7°F) to 58.1°C (136.6°F) on 20 July 2006 in China's Qaidam Basin, a crescent-shaped depression hemmed in by mountains on the Tibetan Plateau. And the coldest spot on our planet? No big surprise: Antarctica. But a satellite reading of –110.9°C (–167.6°F) in 2016 is more than 20° chillier than the coldest air temperature recorded in 1983. It's unclear whether climate change is driving up surface temperatures, Zhao says. But she notes that the Sonoran's highs coincided with La Niña, a climate oscillation featuring cooler surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean and drier desert conditions. Higher temperatures are bad news for desert creatures being pushed to the edge of their heat tolerances. "These extremes are really laying it on the ecosystems," Mildrexler says. On the flip side, he says, the data reveal an impressive cooling effect of forests. Trees tap water with their deep roots and dissipate heat through transpiration, he notes, which cools their canopies and the surrounding air. "That keeps maximum temperatures down and protects biodiversity." And that offers a lesson for urban planners, Mildrexler says: Greener really is cooler.