May Review / June Preview

It seems like I say this a lot, but "and so we come to the end of another warm month."

This May had more days above 25°C than in any of the last 20 years. And almost half of the month broke the 20°C mark, although that falls shy of the 19 days above 20°C in 1998.

There isn't much to say about the lows, beyond the fact that there were two nights that were just a touch below freezing. That's fairly typical, but about one quarter of the time May has no nights below 0°C.

Looking at June we see a lot more red. Although this May we had 6 days above 25°C, and in the last 20 years the only Junes that had more days than that above 25°C were 2015, 2006, 2004 and 2002. Even in terms of days above 20°C, the average for June is 17 which is only a bit more than the 15 that we had in May. In terms of lows, in the last 20 years there hasn't been a low below freezing during June.

Here's another look at where we've been, and what to expect:

The last two months really was a rollercoaster, with temperatures fluctuating between 20-year highs and 20-year lows. Although from the 2015 numbers for June and July, it looks like the same thing happened last year. And at the tail-end of this chart we can see temperatures start to trend downward again in late July.

The real story of May was the much needed precipitation:

The Blatchford data for precipitation isn't very good, so here I'm using information from the International Airport.

Prior to all of the rain on the May long weekend 2016 had been sitting in 2nd-last place, just above 2001. But with about 100mm of rain in the past two weeks, that pushed us up above the 20-year average. Unfortunately this chart isn't the easiest to read, but in a few weeks I'll take a look at Edmonton's monsoon season in more detail.