After record-setting June and July, Phoenix area enjoys relatively nice August
Sep 3, 2016, 6:59 AM
(AP Photo/Matt York)
PHOENIX — After a blazing hot June and July, the Phoenix area enjoyed an August that was slightly cooler than normal, the National Weather Service said Friday.
Hector Vasquez with the weather service said the average high during August was 103 degrees, more than a full degree below normal. This came after June and July combined for 27 days with temperatures of 110 degrees or hotter, breaking several heat records.
He credited a stream of storms from the Pacific Ocean as a reason for the relatively balmy month.
“Pacific storms that moved into the western states and kind of cooled the entire western half of the United States, including Phoenix, so August was certainly unusual,” he said.
Those storms dropped 1.25 inches of rain at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport during August, a quarter-inch more than normal.
The storms hit the Phoenix area hard. Several days of rain causes all sorts of flooding and traffic issues, including closing down Interstate 17 in Phoenix for hours.
Vasquez said the weather service tracked unusual weather patters all along the West Coast, including as far north as Washington and Oregon, that kept things a little cooler in Arizona.
“It was kind of unusual over the Southwest, mainly because there were what we would consider early fall storms, like September-like patterns, developing in the Pacific Northwest,” he said.
KTAR’s Jim Cross contributed to this report.