June was weird. By some measures, it was a month of extreme weather. By other measures, notsomuch. Let’s dig into the preliminary monthly climate data from the National Weather Service and see what we can find out. For purposes of this review, we’re focusing on data from the Orlando International Airport weather station… your climate mileage may vary.
Temperatures
June 25th was the hottest day of the month, officially registering a high temperature of 98 degrees. 26 off the 30 days in the month had a high of at least 90 degrees (and the remaining four had highs of either 85 or 88 degrees). A “normal” June only has about 18 days above 90 degrees… not 26. The lowest temperature we saw during the entire month was 70 degrees, happening on both June 16. Regardless of whether you’re talking about High temps, Low temps, or Mean Average temps, June’s temperatures were roughly two degrees above normal (measured from 1981-2010). Historical record highs of 101 degrees, dating back to the 1920s, were able to hang on for another year.
Rainfall
June was a bit wetter than normal, with rainfall totaling 8.97 inches. 3.31 inches of that fell over just two days… 1.52 inches on June 9th and 1.79 inches on June 16th. Rainfall was measured at the airport 23 days out of the month.
The total rainfall of 8.97 inches is 1.39 inches more than normal, but well shy of the 1968 record of 18.28 inches (courtesy of Hurricane Abby and her spinoff Hurricane Brenda). Of course, if we’re being honest, a lot of the storms this past June were pretty grumpy, even if not tropical in nature. There were plenty of significant weather advisories, a handful of severe thunderstorm warnings, and even a tornado warning for good measure. Damage reports were thankfully pretty limited.
Energy Usage
I’m out of whiskey, so I won’t try to explain the concept of Cooling Degree Days again. If you’re not familiar with it, check out our recap of May’s climatology for a primer. With that knowledge in mind, we can exchange learned looks at one another while confidently stating that June had 554 Cooling Degree Days, 64 more than normal and 43 more than June 2018. That means that your power bill is probably going to be higher than Cheech and Chong in Colorado on April 20th.
30-Day Outlook
July is going to be hot, obviously. It’s still a bit early to quantify the specifics, but the NWS Climate Prediction Center does anticipate at least a 40% chance that July’s temperatures will be higher than normal.