June Review / July Preview

Edmonton Weather Nerdery has been pretty quiet this month, but as we look back at June we'll see that it was a pretty quiet month overall for Edmonton weather:

High Temperatures

We didn't set any all-time High temperature records this June, but we did set 6 recent (since 1996) records. Combined with the 8 that we set in May that makes 14 hottest-days-since-1996 in the last two months.

For the last week of June things noticeably cooled off, but that just put the Highs right around average.

This June we didn't have any Highs which hit 30°C, but we did have 11 days at 25°C, and 25 days at 20°C. That meant this was a pretty warm June, although not quite as warm as 2016 or 2002.

One thing to note is that the last 4 June's have all been more summer-like than typical. Since 2015 June has averaged 10 days at 25°C, but for 2003-2014 we were down at only 4 25°C days. And since 2015 June has averaged 24 days at 20°C compared to 16 days for 2003-2014.

And last month I'd said: "Normally June is warmer than May, but that will be a tough trick to pull off this year." And June might have actually pulled it off, depending on how you count:

May had 1 day which hit 30°C and 13 days at 25°C, and that beats June's score of 0 and 11. But June's 25 days at 20°C beats May's 23, and the average High for June was 23.1°C compared to 22.3°C.

Either way though, 2018's extremely warm May was followed by a very warm June. May and June are often iffy, shoulder-season months, but in 2018 they were basically 2 bonus months of summer to make up for the very late spring.


Low Temperatures

For the Low temperatures we did set one all-time warmest Low on June 25th at 17.4°C, and then 4 other since-1996 records.

The range of Low temperatures in June is very tight - from about 5°C up to 17°C - and so even our colder nights this month stayed pretty close to the average.

And here again we can see how uniform (ie. orange) June Low temperatures are. This June we did have one night below 5°C, which is a little unusual. But our average Low of 11.2°C was still on the warm side of things, behind only 2006, 2016 and 2015.


Precipitation

With 76.2mm of rain at the International Airport and 62.2mm at Blatchford this June was right around the average of 72mm. It was also a little bit above the 57mm that we got last June.

This chart shows the number of days each month which recorded precipitation. This June the International had 11 days, which is a bit below the average of 14 days. But Blatchford was way down at 5 days, and it was the third month in a row that was well below the average.


July Temperatures

Looking ahead to July, May and June of 2018 really were quite July-like - we've already had a lot of 20°C and 25°C days in the last two months. July's average High will probably top May and June, but there's a chance that the number of warm days won't. And the unfortunate fact is that mid-late July is when our temperatures will start trending downward again.