Driven by a toasty spell that began on Memorial Day, last month became the second-warmest May in Philadelphia in records dating to 1874, with an average temperature of 70.1, according to the National Weather Service.
As the rains held off on Sunday afternoon, the temperature shot up to 92 at Philadelphia International Airport.
For the week, temperatures averaged almost 11 degrees above normals, but May 1991, in the clubhouse at 70.8, survived the surge to hold on to first place.
The May warmth clearly was related to the lack of rain.
May 2015 was the 12th driest on record, with a mere 1.19 inches of rain, and the driest month since November 2012 when the region experienced a welcome rain respite while recovering from the ravages of Sandy. (A footnote: the Philadelphia precipitation records begin in 1872.)
Last week we noted that the spreading dryness was raising some concerns around here and elsewhere in the East. Drought watches cover 27 counties in Pennsylvania, as nearby as Berks.
But just when things were beginning to look dicey, in the first two days of June the atmosphere wrung out 2 inches of rain atop the official Philadelphia rain gauge, nearly double the May total.
What all these means for the rest of the meteorological summer is impossible to know, but in its update issued Sunday the government's Climate Prediction Center said the odds favor above-normal temperatures along the East Coast in June.