August Outlook: Warm Like July But More Rain Than July

The final month of "meteorological" summer gets underway Wednesday. Before we get to the forecast for August, let's quickly review July.July started hotter than a firecracker. The heat was accompanied by some remarkably dry weather, too. Yards browned up in a hurry.July was the warmest since 2012 in Youngstown. Nowhere near the top of the record book but significant nonetheless. We were not alone. Many parts of the US had a warmer-than-average July. Temperature anomalies: August will get underway with fairly seasonable weather through Friday. After that, we are going to get back into the kind of pattern that produced the hot weather in early July. The first half of August looks quite hot...the second half may feature more frequent cool shots. Overall, odds favor another warmer-than-average month. The highest departures from average should end up being in New England. While a *WET* month does not seem likely, odds are favoring a month with more frequent rains than July. That, combined with the bouts of wet weather that we had in late July, means that we should avoid widespread drought conditions this summer. By the way, August has been one of our more benign months in recent years, at least as far as temperatures go. 2016 was the exception; it was the 7th warmest August on record.  Otherwise, temperatures have been pretty close to the average (combining highs and lows) of 68.1. In fact, 2017 and 2013 were exactly average.