Steve Quayle News Alerts

September 3, 2002

Much of USA endured record heat and drought, but fall and winter should bring relief.

Say good riddance to the scorching heat wave that broke summer weather records from the Grand Canyon to Central Park in Manhattan.

The forecasts for September and the rest of autumn, with some exceptions, call for near-normal temperatures.

El Niño is expected to return in the next few months to produce warmer temperatures in the northern-tier states and cooler temperatures and heavier rains in the southern states.

Labor Day closed out one of the most miserably hot summers in recent memory for much of the country. And not a moment too soon.

In Washington, the heat was so stultifyingly similar to President Bush's beloved Crawford, Texas, that he could have stayed at the White House for his annual August vacation instead of going home. The month was the third-hottest August recorded since the city began keeping records in 1871. Hotter Augusts occurred in 1980 and 1988.

In New York City's Central Park, it has been 90 degrees or hotter on 30 days so far this year — double the annual average of 15 days.

Whoa, Philly

In Philadelphia, the heat and humidity got so bad that horse-drawn carriages regularly were pulled off downtown streets. City regulations require horses to stay in the barn when the temperature reaches 91 degrees.

"Now they're using the heat index, so business has been pretty rough this summer," says Glenn Weiker, director of the Philadelphia Carriage Co. "The humidity was the thing. The word that keeps coming to mind is 'staggering.' "

It was so hot throughout the east that freight trains operating in 23 states east of the Mississippi River were ordered to run at slower speeds after investigators determined that heat-warped tracks may have contributed to an Amtrak derailment outside Washington on July 29.

And it was worse in the sizzling west. Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Flagstaff, Ariz., set new records for the warmest Julys on record. August offered little relief. Grand Junction, Colo., experienced 21 days of 100 degrees.

It was so hot and dry in Montana that the nitrate levels in plants have risen to toxic levels. That prompted a warning to ranchers to be on the lookout for hay poisonous to cattle. Plants absorb nitrogen from soil as nitrate and convert it to protein. But under stressful conditions, such as extreme heat, nitrate accumulates faster than it can be converted.

"It's as hot as I can remember here in Billings. You could hardly go outside," says Doris Peterson, 69, a retired nurse. "It seemed like that's all people talked about, even more than politics and the drop in the stock market."

In Utah, heat and drought shrunk the Great Salt Lake to its lowest level in 22 years. Salt Lake City had its hottest July since record-keeping began in 1874.

Good for business

Air conditioning was the answer for most, and sales were up across the country. In Sparks, Nev., where the mercury hit a record 108 degrees in July, Jim Paschall's air-conditioning business went into overdrive.

"Business this year for the summer was up 74%," Paschall says. "Anybody who came into a building would comment about how hot it was. That was the conversation all day long."

One customer called to have air conditioning installed after the thermostat in the person's bedroom read 98 degrees.

In Los Angeles, temperatures returned to normal in August, but the continuing dryness prompted officials to station firefighters in Malibu and the San Gabriel Mountains as a precaution.

"We've had less than a third of normal rainfall," says Tim McClung, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Oxnard, south of Santa Barbara. "This is on the heels of the driest water year ever in Southern California. Basically, we haven't had a good rain in 18 months."

The lack of rain will become more critical as the dry Santa Ana winds begin to blow this fall through the coastal mountain ranges of Southern California and help to create perfect fire conditions.

"We're heading into our Santa Ana season, September through November," McClung says. "That, of course, is another great fear we have."

The story of the summer's weather was the drought. The parched West was so dry that huge wildfires scorched five states: Arizona, New Mexico, California, Oregon and Colorado. And the mid-Atlantic, from the Carolinas to New England, suffered from such a severe lack of rain that water restrictions were imposed and crops failed in counties that are usually abundantly green.

There was an oasis of dampness. Rains soaked the center of the country, from the upper Midwest, where Minneapolis chalked up its fourth-wettest summer since 1891, to Texas, where San Antonio recorded its wettest summer since 1871.

Parts of Minnesota were like "a Garden of Eden," says Greg Spoden, a state climatologist.

Forecast: Relief

Fall and winter weather should bring relief from the heat for much of the country.

The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md., forecasts near-normal temperatures and rainfall for most of the country in October, November and December.

"Going into September, we've got nowhere near as extreme temperatures as we had in July and August," says Doug LeComte, a senior meteorologist. "That could be good news for those of us who suffered from the summer heat."

For those looking for a little more punch in their winter forecast, there's the Farmer's Almanac, which forecasts colder-than-normal winter temperatures and heavy snow from Colorado to Maine.

The latest edition of the 186-year-old almanac bases its forecast on a secret model that considers sunspot activity, planet position and the effects of the moon.

The almanac made a similar forecast last winter and was wrong. The almanac predicted places such as Portland, Maine, and Burlington, Vt., would be buried under snow. Instead, the Eastern Seaboard had one of its balmiest winters ever.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2002/2002-09-03-summer-simmers.htm