Just five days before summer 2012 came to an end, Portland hit 90 degrees. And our six year old told me, “I’m so hot, I’m looking forward to some cool rain someday.”
Note to my son: be careful what you wish for!
The chart to the right shows what happened to our temperatures the final week of summer–they dropped like a rock! And on the last morning of summer (a Friday) we woke up to drizzle and light rain with as much as .08″ of accumulation in the Portland-Vancouver metro area. My son got his wish!
Portland Summer 2012: Overall Warm & Dry
After a slow start in June — and an unusually cool July — summer 2012 warmed up and dried out in Portland.
In fact, August tied as one of our driest ever–with a trace of rain–in other words, only some drops! This chart explains the rest of summer.
Do you remember our hottest days in 2012? August 4th was 102. August 16th was 100. And we had 11 days at 90-plus. That’s our longterm average based on records going back to 1940. We had 8 of these days in August and 3 in September. We never did hit 90 in June (no surprise) or July (unusual!). My favorite summer fact: at one point we were hotter than Phoenix, Arizona!
So–what do you say about this summer? Did you like it? Were you disappointed or happy with how the weather turned out?
One thing’s for sure–it was a lot warmer and drier than last year! And as we learned during the summer Olympics–Portland weather is nicer than London!
I liked summer 2012 too! We weren’t quite as warm and dry as Portland here, but it sure was a big improvement over Summer 2011. A brief shower came over us this morning (just before 6am) and yesterday’s maximum was 18F cooler than the day before, but I’d say the weather has changed just enough to make it feel that fall has really begun.