Almanac for Tuesday, November 29, 2011
High: 78
Normal High: 68
Record High: 87 set in 1999
Low: 45
Normal Low: 42
Record Low 23 set in 1934
Rain/Snow: .00″
Month to Date: .97″
Year to Date: 10.20″
Normal Year to Date: 10.64″
Departure from Normal: -.44″
Record High for November 30th is 85 set in 1999
Record Low for November 30th is 23 set in 2010
Sunrise: 7:06, Sunset: 5:19
The Sunrise over Pusch Peak on the 29th was amazing:
Good Morning from Oro Valley
Almanac – Final Numbers for Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Kinda hot for this time of year.
May was Cool and Dry. Don’t get used to it!
Saguaro in Bloom, May 8, 2010
The numbers are back from the National Weather Service office in Tucson and the numbers show what you already know. May was nice and cool. Almost a full degree below “normal.” It was dry too. Only .02″ fell at the official rain gauge at the International Airport, .22″ below normal.
The cool May continued the streak of a cool year so far. For the first time since 1988 the average temperature through May in Tucson was below normal and May was the 4th month in a row below normal as well.
You can read the entire summary here.
Now the bad news. This Summer is likely to heat up. The National Weather Service says there is a good chance that we will be hotter than normal this June, and this Summer, with equal chances of normal rainfall during Monsoon. AccuWeather.com is also predicting a hot Summer pretty much for all of the country except maybe the West Coast and the Northern Plains.
As for our Monsoon, the National Weather Service office released this forecast a few weeks ago. Assuming that the Pacific flips to a La Nina this Summer I think we will see a slow start to Monsoon with an active finish! We may end up with normal, or above normal rainfall, with periods of heavy rain in August and September. I hope that forecast bears out.
Joe Bastardi with AccuWeather and others are calling for a very active Hurricane Season in the Atlantic. The Gulf of Mexico is warming quickly and the coming La Nina in the Pacific will negate the shear that comes with El Nino years. Bastardi is already calling it the Hurricane Season from Hades and we haven’t seen any activity yet. The good news is a couple of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico may actually help disperse the oil from the BP oil spill!
Joe Bastardi is also predicting a lot of melting ice in the Arctic this Summer. Folks will likely point to that as more evidence of Global Warming. However, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has entered a cold phase. La Nina and a cold Pacific for the next year and a half will bring the ice back in a hurry and the country will be cold and colder the next two Winters. Time will tell.
April was Cool. And the Temperatures Weren’t as Hot Either.
April is one of those months in Tucson that can be kinda crazy. This year certainly was unusual. Normally, Tucson starts to heat up in May. When the rest of the country is saying, “April showers bring May flowers,” we are getting the AC units ready for the heavy lifting in the month’s to come, usually using them some in April. This year, not so much.
April 2010 was most unusual in that we still haven’t hit 90 yet this year! We were close. We hit 89 on the 15th, 27th and 28th for the hottest highs of the month. According to the National Weather Service or average hottest high in April is 94.
As cool as our highs were, or lows were not so low. Or coldest morning was 41 which occurred on the 2nd. Our average coldest low in April is is 39.
For the month, our highs averaged out to 79.9 compared to average of 81.5. Our lows averaged to 50.8 compared to 50.5 normally. In all, we finished .7 degrees below normal for the month.
We ended up with just under a quarter of an inch of rain in April at .23″ compared to a normal .28″. That’s pretty close.
The average wind speed for the month was 7 mph with the highest gust just the other day, 39 mph the afternoon of April 29th.
That’s April, 2010 in a nutshell. As one of my weather watchers used to tell me, “Looks like a big storm this weekend. We’ll know more on Monday.” Same with May, 2010. We’ll know more in June. Stay tuned.
