Yes, it’s August, but worst of summer’s heat likely over, meteorologists say

After one of the warmest and wetter Julys on record, meteorologists are confident the worst of summer’s heat is over, if not the sogginess.

On a day when iPhones went bonkers with flood alerts, a mere 0.01 inches of rain was measured officially on Wednesday at Philadelphia International Airport — further evidence of the caprice of summer thunderstorms and the quirkiness of an utterly strange month.

But that was enough to nudge the monthly total to 6.03, among the top 25 wet Julys on records dating to 1872. The combined June-July total, 13.97, was good for No. 6 on the list, a splash above the 13.95 of 1887.

Ironically, however, the month featured a rare stretch of clear days unmatched in at least the last five years.

July also was quite warm, No. 10 on the heat parade and a continuation of a trend. For Julys, this has been the warmest decade on record.

But Philadelphia so far has reported only one heat-related death, and the region had only one serious heat wave, a four-day affair that maxed out with a daily high of 98 on July 21.

Is that all there is?

“A repeat of that is unlikely in August,” said Brad Pugh, a long-range forecast specialist at the government’s Climate Prediction Center, which issued its updated monthly outlook this week.

“We probably saw our hottest stretch of weather,” agreed Paul Pastelok, the veteran seasonal forecaster at AccuWeather Inc.

“I wouldn’t call it a scorcher,” Pastelok said of the summer of 2019 thus far. Yet it was quite warm in July, with an average official temperature of 80.9.

Philadelphia experienced 18 days with highs of 90 or better; the long-term average is around 10.

Fortunately, only one heat-related death was reported, and even though summers in the last 10 years have been generally warmer than those of the ’90s, heat-related mortality has been five times lower.

Why? Health experts say one factor has been record-keeping. In calculating city fatalities, Philadelphia was among the first jurisdictions to include deaths in which heat was a contributing cause.

Traditionally, a heat death required verifying hyperthermia, a body temperature of 105. If hundreds of people were dying, it would be impossible to get to victims in time to measure body temperatures near the moment of death.

The Philadelphia system, health officials said, helped raised awareness of heat hazards and motivated cities to become more proactive.

Another likely factor has been luck. This summer, the heat waves have not endured. The nasty one that began on the 19th was short-lived.

The deadly ones in 1993, 1995, and 1999 lasted several days. “It’s been a while” since we’ve experienced anything similar, said Pastelok.

“It’s pretty remarkable the last year or two how wet it’s been across the country,” said the climate center’s Pugh. The nation has set annual precipitation records, and the Philadelphia region has joined the party.

However, this summer, not every region has been hammered.

“We’ve been missing stuff,” said Pastelok, who lives and works in the State College area, in the very center of the state. “My grass is turning brown.”

Storms “kept developing in the same areas, southeast of the mountains, heading out to sea, and falling apart.”

Philadelphia — especially Philadelphia International Airport — has been soak-central. But it wasn’t PHL’s turn on Wednesday, providing a dramatic example of the atmosphere’s sense of whimsy.

Over 1.7 inches of rain fell in separate downpours at the Northeast Philadelphia Airport between 2 and 5 p.m., and the flood alarms sounded. Yet only 0.01 inch found its way into the PHL gauge.

“We couldn’t believe it either," said Jonathan O’Brien, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly. "We actually called the airport observer to see if that was correct.”

For all the rain, July did bring the region something completely different: an amazing sequence of clear days, six of them starting on the 25th.

“It was really to nice to have,” said Trent Davis, O’Brien’s weather service colleague in Mount Holly.

It also was a rarity, something that hasn’t happened in at least five years, based on the available weather service records.

Unfortunately, sky-cover data aren’t the best. “Sky cover is tough,” said O’Brien. In the old days (that would be before 1995 here), it was measured by human observers who used old-fashioned instruments — their eyes.

When the weather service automated its measuring systems, it began relying on ceilometers, which scan the skies with a beam about the size of a standard refrigerator.

Officially, to be declared “clear,” the sky has to be 70% or better cloud-free, averaged out over the daylight hours.

However it is measured, it’s tough to get a run of clear days around here, given our proximity to so many bodies of water.

The climate center says the odds favor cooler-than-normal temperatures through mid-August in much of the region and normal precipitation.

While forecasters say it’s unlikely that we’ll see the extreme heat of July, they do see potential for above-average temperatures from the Delaware River east.

But the atmosphere tends not to take those long-term outlooks seriously, and one wild card is the fact that the Atlantic tropical storm season soon will be entering its peak period.

Said Pugh, “Unfortunately for the East Coast, there’s really not a strong signal.”