By Heidi Sonen and Roscoe Shaw
The Hottest Day of the Year
Take a guess: Which is normally the hottest time of year? Is it June 21 when the sun is strongest? Or is it July 4 when the fireworks light up the sky? Or is it July 18 when the heat has built up all summer?
If you answered July 18, you are correct. The sun is highest in the sky and strongest on the summer solstice, usually on June 21. But for the next month, we continue to heat up more than we cool off. Eventually, as the sun angle lowers, we begin to lose more heat than we are adding and the temperature cools after July 18.
This lag between the stronger sun and the highest temperatures plays out every day, too. The strongest sun occurs at high noon but the afternoon high temperature doesn’t usually happen until 5 p.m. in the summer. With earlier sunset, winter highs tend to occur around 2 p.m.
On July 18, our average high is 88 and the average low is 67. Then it’s all downhill until January 18 averages just 45 and 27.
June Recap
June was the fifth consecutive month with cooler than normal temperatures. The hottest was just 90 on the 12th and 28th. But rain was the real story. Crozet picked up 4.76” of rain in just five days early in the month and just when things started to dry out, another 3.30” fell on June 17. The monthly total of 8.57” was not a record but it does guarantee that the reservoirs won’t run low this summer.
Rain Totals
- Crozet 8.57”
- Greenwood 5.87”
- Charlottesville Airport 7.06”
- Waynesboro 8.63”
- Nellysford 5.96”
- Univ of Virginia 9.89”
