TOLEDO, Ohio — Fall is officially here, and that means cooler weather, shorter days and brighter colors. Now that summer 2023 is in the rearview mirror, let's recap the season's rainfall and temperatures and look ahead to autumn.
Summer started with a brief stretch of warm weather, and June 1 and 2 brought the hottest temperature of the month at 92 degrees. After that, cooler-than-normal conditions quickly settled in, and June brought an average high temperature of only 82. Overall, the month was two degrees below normal. June also featured a nice stretch of dry weather with only 2.3 inches of rain over the course of the month, 1.16 inches below average.
Wet weather quickly returned into July, which brought numerous rounds of rain and thunderstorms. July rainfall tallied up to a whopping 5.8 inches, nearly two and a half inches above average. Despite the heavy rain, July temperatures ended up near normal with an average high of 85 degrees. July is statistically our hottest month of the year, and this one went down as a wet one with near normal temperatures.
August brought the hottest day of the summer of 93 degrees on Aug. 23, but as a whole, ended up below average in the temperature department. August also featured wet weather with rainfall totals of 3.8 inches.
So how did the summer fare overall? Summer 2023 brought cooler-than-normal conditions with temperatures 1.54 degrees below average. Rainfall totals ended up well above average with nearly a foot of rainfall. The summer dumped out 11.83 inches of rain, fewer than five inches shy of the record of 16.64 inches from 1989. The summer delivered numerous rain systems with 26 days over 0.01 inches of rain and 17 days with a tenth of an inch or more.
While this heavy summer rainfall was in part due to the jet stream weather pattern, climate change is making heavy downpours and slow-moving thunderstorms more common by providing the atmosphere with more moisture. After a wet summer season, September has moved through with close to an inch of rain. Stay tuned to the WTOL 11 Weather Team for updates on the weather forecast as we head into October.
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While the summer brought wetter and cooler conditions locally, how did the season fare across the world? According to NASA records, summer 2023 officially went down as the hottest across the globe. This summer exceeded any other in recorded history since 1880 by 0.4 degrees.
Overall, the summer was 2.1 degrees hotter than average based on the baseline range of summer temperatures from 1951-1980. This globally hot summer represents the broader trend of climate change. Summer weather continues to grow warmer, achieving new thresholds of heat across the globe. Summer weather will likely continue to grow hotter in the future.
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As we move into October, warmer-than-average conditions will likely redevelop across the region, bringing mild weather and a good deal of sunshine to the area. The WTOL 11 10-day forecast features temperatures climbing to the 70s this weekend, surging to the mid-80s by next week. Stay tuned for the latest forecast and and subscribe for a new Climate Friday Newsletter every week.