Tuesday, September 2, 2008

August 2008 Summary

An average month all around

The August daytime highs were about half a degree below average while the early morning lows were about half a degree above average. Not surprisingly this means the month was average overall with only a few days that were more than 5 degrees off of the average. We certainly haven't seen any extended hot weather streaks this year with only two days above 30°C so far in 2008 and they were both way back in early June.

After two very extreme months of precipitation, August was only average. The 79.2 mm was below the average of 87.0 mm, but still within the average range. However, 62 mm of that fell during the first half of the month leaving the second half dare I say dry? I don't want to say we are in a drought, but it was the driest 15 day period since late May - early June.

We have had 746.7 mm of precipitation so far in 2008 compared to the average for this time of year of 596.0 mm. This is the second highest total at this point of the year since 1970. We are chasing 1985 which had 803.8 mm at the end of August and did end up having the recent record for wettest year. Going back to the 1915, where missing data periods becomes an issue, there are 4 more years with higher values as of August 31st. So we can say that so far it is the 6th wettest year since record keeping began back in 1915.

Environment Canada prediction of temperature for the month: Average
Actual Temperature: Average

Summary for August 2008:
Maximum Temperature 28.6 °C
Minimum Temperature 6.9 °C
Average Daily High Temperature 24.1 °C (Long term average 24.8 °C)
Average Daily Low Temperature 13.1 °C (Long term average 12.7 °C)
Total Precipitation 79.2 mm (Long term average 87.0 mm)

(Long term averages based on 1970-2000 data for the Waterloo Wellington Airport)

Follow this link to see the graph showing the temperature and precipitation:





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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This streak of below-30 °C weather is probably going to come back and haunt us all winter long. Similarly, the hurricain season seems to be reving up for a nasty one.

On another front, these "colder" months (below the 30 °C mark) in the region is convincing some people that there is no such thing as global warming, even though the average global temperature is indeed increasing.

Frank said...

Even though we haven't had any 30°C temperatures this summer it will still probably come in as an above average summer for temperature.

Anonymous said...

Not much of a summer. The lack of heat (I think) hurt all crops. Everything is 2 to 3 weeks late. Everbearing berries have 2 crops / year but this year it's only a single (late) crop. The volumes of rain split and molded tomatoes - and the harvest was low (due to lack of heat?). For the first time in a decade we were able to grow a bumper crop of lettuce - usually we get a warm spell and it bolts. Brown rot (mold on plum, cherry, raspberry) was a real problem, as was late blight on tomatoes, due to the amount of rain.