A few days back I put the 2012 heat and drought in historical perspective. At that point we were on pace too set the record for the warmest July ever in Wausau. Now July is behind us, we have the numbers tabulated, and we did not end up breaking the record. 1936 still stands as the warmest July ever in Wausau when the average temperature was 76.7. July of 2012 averaged 76.0, which puts it in second place.
Some other interesting “hot” notes from the month include 12 days with high temps of 90 or greater, 16 days with high temps in the 80s, and only 3 days with high temps in the 70s. This is an extreme contrast with the July weather from just three years ago. In July of 2009 there were no days with high temps in the 90s, only 5 days with highs in the 80s, 21 days with highs in the 70s, and 5 days with highs in the 60s!
During July of this year we had 3 record high temps. The highs of 96 on the 4th and 98 on the 16th set new records for those dates, while the high of 96 on the 5th tied the old record. We set a new record for the warmest low temperature on the 5th when the mercury only dropped to 74. We also had a record rainfall on the 19th which was 1.61 inches. This was the bulk of the precipitation that fell for the entire month in Wausau. In general more rain fell in the northwoods and much less rain fell in the southern part of the area.
There were no really strange patterns in the highs or lows except that we had three days in a row with a high temp of 96 (from the 4th to the 6th) and we had 6 different days with a low temperature of 67. Here are the final sats for Wausau:
Average High: 88.0 (normal: 80.0)
Average Low: 63.9 (normal: 58.6)
Precipitation: 2.93 inches (normal: 3.83 inches)
Snowfall: 0.0 inches (normal: 0.0 inches)
Highest Temperature: 98 on the 16th
Lowest Temperature: 55 on the 20th
Have a fine Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew
Posted under Monthly Recap
This post was written by jloew on August 1, 2012
Justin – we live between Rudolph and Versper. We have watched storm after storm and radar image after image create a virtual bubble around us – storms to each direction but overhead. Is there some geologic feature, some meterologic reason, something which causes this phenomena?
It goes around. Some years it seems like the rain hits every time. Other years it seems you can’t buy a drop of rain. If there was a geologic feature responsible for the lack of rain, Rudolph and Vesper would be a desert, because there would not be much rain any year. During a drought is when the “bad luck” seems to happen more often. The rain tends to be streaky and hit-or-miss, that is how the drought develops. I am sure that at some point in the near future we will start to see more rain. Thanks for the comment Delahny.