It's been a cooler summer, so far

Aug 05, 2009 at 02:25 pm by Observer-Review


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It's been a cooler summer, so far

TRI-COUNTY AREA—Cool nights, rain, rain, rain and then not so much.
That’s not a big surprise to National Weather Service meteorologist Joanne LaBounty.
LaBounty said records at the agency’s Binghamton office show that the average temperature for June was 63 degrees, nearly a full degree below normal.  The average high temperature for June was 71.6, or 1.8 degrees below normal.
The cooler June weather was accompanied by 5.48 inches of rainfall, 44 percent more than the normal 3.8 inches.
In July, temperatures haven’t improved that much. Through July 29, the average daily temperature was 65.2 degrees, or 3.5 degrees below normal.  The rain that plagued June has tapered off in July, with 1.68 inches through July 29, or nearly 1.5 inches below normal.
“Summertime from place to place tends to vary quite a bit because of thunderstorms,” LaBounty said. “Some locations can get four inches of rain in a (single) thunderstorm.”
Cool temperatures persisted in July, with the National Weather Service in Binghamton recording a record low of 51 degrees July 15.  LaBounty said the agency received reports of temperatures in the 40s that day in the deeper valleys.
“We have had cooler Julys than normal before,” LaBounty said. “It’s definitely noticeable but it has happened before.”
The average daily temperature for July 2001 was 3.7 degrees below normal, slightly cooler than the first 29 days of July this year.
Closer to the Tri-County Area, the same weather pattern has prevailed so far this summer.  In Elmira, for example, the average daily temperature through July 29 was 65.3 degrees. That’s five degrees below the normal average for the month of 70.3.  In the same period, Elmira had 2.26 inches of rain, compared with a normal July total of 3.42.
In June, Elmira’s average daily temperature was 62.9, or 2.5 degrees below the normal average for the month of 65.4. June rainfall in Elmira total 4.4 inches, above the normal 4.01 inches.
Mark W. Wysocki at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, said central New York’s weather this summer has been affected by a persistent area of low pressure over Hudson Bay.
“That puts us right in the downstream flow of cooler air coming from central Canada,” said Wysocki, a lecturer in meteorology at Cornell. “May and June were fairly wet across the Northeast. Now all of a sudden in July, somebody shut off the spigot.”
Through July 30, Wysocki said, Ithaca’s average daily temperature was almost four degrees below normal and its average precipitation four inches below normal.
“Most of the Northeast is two to six degrees below average,” he said.
Although the jetstream locked in early to a pattern that resulted in cool and wet weather in the Northeast, Wysocki said that doesn’t mean the rest of summer will bring the same kind of weather.
“There are some variations and subtle changes that are occurring in the shape of the jetstream and storm tracks,” he said.
As for the upcoming winter, forecasters can draw no conclusions about its severity from the summer’s weather pattern, Wysocki said.
There is however, one bright spot in the winter outlook.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admistration announced July 9 that an El Nino is forming. The periodic warming of central and eastern tropical Pacific waters, if it reaches full strength, could portend a milder winter for the Northeast, Wysocki said.
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