Top 10 Thursday

The second heat wave of the season is history and now a refreshing north breeze is arriving on the scene, assuring us a nice stretch of weather for fair goers in McArthur, Cottageville and Milton. By sunrise Thursday, a taste of September will grace our presence with temperatures in the 50s in rural areas like Salt Rock, Crown City and Carter Caves!

Thursday will feature plenty of Tar Heel Blue sunshine in a sapphire setting with a warm breeze sweetly caressing the landscape. Afternoon temperatures will only inch into the 80s, but with a high sunburn index, the kids will still need to lather up with the sunblock before heading out to play. Hey, a TC Top 10er is on tap.

Of course, it’s still July here in Appalachia and more heat is assured if the calendar holds true, but so far we have braved a modest amount of summer sizzle. By my count, twelve 90 degree days have graced the presence of shoppers at the farmers market in Huntington with 14 days of helter swelter weather in Charleston.

With these numbers in mind, you could make a strong case that my forecast of 17 ninety degree days this summer is going to be short. Truth be told, if I had to make an update, I might tweak that number up to 19, but given the pattern I see developing for the next 10 days, I really don’t see another 90 day until at least the first week of August.

That means as two-a-days start for local high school football teams, conditions will not be nearly as intense as last year when we were near 100 in the heat index nearly every day in August.

The oddity in the July pattern has been the difference in rainfall from Huntington to Charleston. In a normal July pattern, it would not be unusual for the amount of rain to vary by an inch or two between those two cities. But this year has been quite the exception. To this point, Charleston is working on a wet July with almost 5 inches of rain to date, while Collis P’s hometown has barely exceeded 1 inch.

I point out this disparity as a way of saying that the drier ground in the Ohio Valley should support more 90 degree days the rest of the summer when compared to the Kanawha Valley.

17 total 90 days still is a reasonable number if we can avoid a long heat wave in mid-August. That’s a flip of a coin forecast as we enter the first days of August in another week.