Back Talk Lakewood/East Dallas

Dallas August weather update

Did you enjoy the cooler, rainy weather this week? Did you think: "What a pleasant surprise, such a nice change from normal?"

Turns out it isn’t all that unusual. This is the warmest month of the year, but it can be not warm. On Aug. 18 and 19, the highs were 82 and 84 -– a wonderful respite from all those 100-degree days earlier in the month, but nothing especially significant. In fact, we have had high temperatures in the 70s in August quite a bit, most recently in 1997. Then, on Aug. 7-8, the highs were only 75 and 76 (which does seem unbelievable). The lowest high temperature recorded for 23 of the 31 days in August is in the 70s, according to the National Weather Service.

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Record Dallas heat, or how crunchy is your lawn?

It’s not so much that yesterday’s high was a record-setting 107 at DFW. Or that we have hit 100 degrees 15 of the past 16 days. Or that the average high was 99.8 degrees in July. Or that the thermometer on my front porch, which gets a direct hit from the afternoon sun, was at 112 at about 6 p.m. yesterday.

What drives me crazy is that it’s still 80 degrees -– or warmer –- when I go walking in the morning, about an hour before the sun comes up. The low has been 80 degrees or more 16 times since July 11. When I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, there were several days when the afternoon high wasn’t 80 degrees.

Four of the warmest summers in the 100 or so years records have been kept, based on highest average temperature, have come in the past 10 years -– 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2006. We’re on pace to add 2008 to that list.

And for those of you tracking rainfall, we’re about five inches below normal. We had less than one inch of rain in July, compared to the 2.12 inches we normally get. So there is a reason the grass is yellow.

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Record Dallas temperatures? You bet

But not for the day’s high. We tied the record for highest minimum temperature for July 13 on Sunday, when the low was 82 degrees at DFW. The last July 13 that was that warm for the low was in 1954.

For those who aren’t keeping track: We’re almost four inches below normal for rain, and almost three inches since June 1. Which means that there is a reason all those lawns are getting crunchy.

By the numbers: We’ve had three days 100 or warmer this month, and eight for the year. That’s half the number of 100-degree days in an average summer, and nowhere near the record of 69, set in 1980.

The other record to watch: The record high minimum temperature for July is 80.8, set in 1998. We’re at 77.2, which is tied for seventh all-time with 1966.

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Power out? It could be worse

TypePad might be back after a four-hour delay — as Jeff Seigel announced in the following post — but we are NOT up and running back at the Advocate Publishing mothership. At least we weren't when I left at 4-ish. That's when the battery in my laptop finally petered out. You see, we — along with a lot of our neighbors — lost power when the mid-morning storms hit. And, man ... was I bothered by the whole situation, at first. For one thing, this is production week — that week of the month the whole team works together (sharing an electricity generated server) to put next month's magazine together. It's the time of the month when stress levels are up and spare time is nonexistent. So we essentially lose a day.

It was only after leaving the office that things fell into perspective.

101 degrees in Dallas: So much for spring

Blame me. I wrote in May that we were enjoying a very seasonable spring. So what happened? We hyper heat into June.

Bleech. Yesterday's 101 at DFW was the first 100-degree day of the year, and it marked the 28th plus-90 reading in the past 29 days. The average temperatures for this time of year are 71 and 91, but we're at 77.7 and 96.9 so far this month. We even set a record on June 8 for lowest minimum temperature with 81.

And it looks like we're back in one of those periods of not enough rain. We were about normal in the middle of May; today, we're almost three inches behind normal. May is our wettest month of the year, but we had less than half the normal amount this year.

One other note: I saw a half dozen or so sprinklers running between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. last week, which violates the city's watering ordinance. That wastes water and doesn't do the lawn any good, either.

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Spring weather that really is spring weather

This post was going to detail the surprisingly cool and pleasantly wet spring we've had, but when I looked up the monthly averages, I discovered we have not had a surprisingly cool and wet spring. We have had a normal spring.

The temperatures and rainfall for March, April and May are more or less average -- and May's temperature is right at it. And yesterday afternoon's high was almost 10 degrees cooler than normal.

Apparently, it has been so long since we had a spring with normal temperatures that we have forgotten what they felt like. Spring last year was the third warmest for minimum temperature since the weather service started keeping records in 1899. And who can forget 2006, with the record 101 on April 17 and the legendary statewide rolling blackout? The spring of 2006, in fact, is on the warmest on record.

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Rebecca Miller to her fans at Back Talk: Thank you

Visitors here have been burning up the comment wires (if I can mix a metaphor) for our item last month about Channel 5, and the way it dumped weather forecaster Rebecca Miller. I passed our link along to her, and got this in return:

I truly appreciate all the kind words expressed by your readers.  ... Thank you so much for thinking enough of me to write.  It is very much appreciated.

We have had more than 55 comments on the four blogs. Normally, 10 is a good number for us. Guess Rebecca really did have a following.

Why are you watering the lawn when it's raining?

The city's seasonal water ordinance took effect this week, which restricts when people can water their grass. Which means it's time for my more or less annual plea for homeowners to turn off the sprinklers when it's raining.

In fact, even though it has rained off and on this week, with more rain forecast today and tomorrow, the sprinklers were on in full force this morning at six or eight houses in Ridgewood Park when I took my daily constitutional.

The one thing I can never figure out, tree-hugging aside, is why people waste money to water when we've had enough rain.

Yet another rainfall record

The National Weather Service says we had 2.35 inches of rain at DFW yesterday, which is the most ever for a March 18. The previous mark was 1.52 inches in 1984.

And that wasn't much, compared to other place. My neighbor at Lovers and Fisher said his rain gauge had more than five inches, and Love Field had 4 1/2 inches.

And, for everyone keeping score after last year's top 5 rainfall event (to paraphrase the weather types), we're about two inches ahead of normal and of last year's pace.

So long, Rebecca Miller

Friday morning update: Ed Bark has an email from Rebecca Miller, which more or less confirms what my friend noted yesterday: "When TV stations decide on changes, the public never knows the real reasons behind the change. Most times, neither do we."

Channel 5 announced yesterday that it wasn't renewing the contract of weather woman (and wine aficionado) Rebecca Miller. I am especially unhappy about this because she was one of the few weather types in town who played it straight. Miller didn't announce that every cold front was bringing with it THE STORM OF THE CENTURY!!!!

Since I long ago stopped trying to figure out why TV stations do what they do, I called a friend of mine who has been in the TV business for more than two decades, and has run a TV newsroom. Miller had been at Channel 5 since 1991 and was quite popular (Ed Bark's post linked to above has 49 comments, most of them favorable); she hardly seems like the kind of person to be let go.

My friend's take on what happened: