Recent Eastern North Carolina Heat Waves
By Gannon Medwick
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
I am filing this blog entry the morning of Tuesday, June 10. My forecast for Tuesday afternoon is for another blistering hot day in Eastern Carolina with inland highs near 99. Temperatures will be a little more manageable - in the low 90s for highs - by Wednesday.
Though our current intense heat wave is not quite over, I feel that now is a fine time to look back on this June’s scorching stretch of weather as well as some other notable heat waves of recent years. First, here are the high temperatures from the past several days:
Thursday, June 5: 97 at Greenville, 96 at New Bern
Friday, June 6: 98 at Greenville, 97 at New Bern
Saturday, June 7: 99 at Greenville, 98 at New Bern
Sunday, June 8: 101 at Greenville, 99 at New Bern
Monday, June 9: 101 at Greenville, 99 at New Bern
Incredibly, New Bern has hit a daily record high temperature on each of the past five days!
So, what about some other notable hot weather streaks in recent memory? Perhaps you remember August 2007. Aided by a developing drought and dry ground, inland temperatures reached 90 or better a whopping 26 of the 31 days in the month. On four of those 26 days, the mercury soared above 100! Greenville hit 103 on the 8th and 101 on the 9th and 10th.
Though the summer of 2006 was far less hot than that of 2007, late July and early August 2006 featured an intense heat wave. Inland Eastern North Carolina’s temperatures crested in the upper 90s from July 31 through August 3. Greenville, Kinston and Kenansville broke 100 degrees on the 4th before relatively cooler temperatures - near 90 - returned on the 5th.
The summer of 2005 featured plentiful rain, and accordingly, no prolonged, intense stretches of heat. The hottest day of this summer was July 25, when the temperature soared to near 100 at Greenville, New Bern and Kinston.
Temperatures failed to reach 100 degrees across most of Eastern Carolina during the summers of 2003 and 2004. The hottest stretch of weather in this period occurred just after Independence Day of that 2004. Inland temperatures reached the middle and upper 90s from July 5th through the 10th.
Lastly, looking back to 2002, I find that two pronounced heat waves occcured in Eastern Carolina during that summer. The first brought inland temperatures to the mid and upper 90s for inland locations from June 12th to the 14th. The second produced upper 90s to near 100 degree temperatures at Greenville, Kinston and New Bern from July 28th through the 30th.
Stay cool! ...and thanks for checking into my blog!
COMMENTS
Gannon,
You are always right on the money and I truly enjoy your
personality every morning on Chanel 9. You are the best!
You truly seem to enjoy your job. Keep you the good work!
I appreciate the kind words, Patsy! Thanks for watching.
Dear Gannon
Missed you last week. New subject for my question:
In the last fifty years how many hurricanes have made landfall on the NC coast in months other than September. I’ll bet not many. No fair counting those that passed by but stayed at sea, or those that came here via the inland “backdoor.”
When was the earliest in the year that a hurricane made landfall on the NC coast?
Why do our hurricanes generally come so late in the season?
Richard Verdier
Oriental
Thanks for the good words, Richard. Man, these questions are going to require me to do some homework! I will post the answers soon in a separate blog.
Take care!
Gannon