As summer winds down, the National Weather Service says it has been one of the hottest – and driest – on record for Mid-Michigan.
The Lansing area is on track to have an average temperature of around 72-degrees for the season by the time summer officially ends next week.
According to the National Weather Service, that puts this summer’s average temperature in the top 20% dating back more than 150 years.
Scott Thomas is a meteorologist for the Grand Rapids field office. He says dew points around 70-to-75-degrees made it feel even hotter, since the air felt sticky.
“When you get that humid with that high of temperatures, it’s going to feel well into the 100-to-110-degree range,” Thomas said. “And that is where we are getting heat indexes that are potentially hazardous to people’s health.”
He says the lowest temperatures recorded in Lansing this summer were also higher than usual, with the coldest evenings only dipping into the upper 30s.
“We have had years that have ended up quite a bit colder for the coldest day of summer,” Thomas said.
While the Lansing airport usually sees about 10-inches of rainfall during the summer, there had only been just over six inches as of Monday afternoon.
That puts this summer in the bottom 20% for precipitation.
Summer ends with the autumnal equinox on Sept. 22.
