Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Weather columnist Kevin Myatt: This year could be as funky as 1977
Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.
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@roanoke.com
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1977 was the era of disco, Jimmy Carter, soaring gas costs and wildly fluctuating temperatures.
While disco and Carter occasionally re-emerge in the public eye, soaring gas costs and wildly fluctuating temperatures are very much on the scene 30 years later.
In 2007, we've already had the warmest March on record and the seventh coldest February on record in Roanoke, dating to 1948.
Now, April, with a peach-killing freeze already under its belt, may be a contender as one of the coolest on record if long-term forecasts of below-normal temperatures for most of the next two weeks pan out.
But for temperature extremes, 2007 might not be able to hang with the zany weather dance of three decades ago. To paraphrase a popular "Saturday Night Live" skit of that era, 1977 was one wild and crazy year.
It began with the coldest month in Roanoke's recorded weather history. January averaged 23.61 degrees, some 13 degrees below normal.
But somebody flipped the heater on two months later. Until this year, March 1977 was the warmest March on record with an average temperature of 52.5 degrees.
By midsummer, the thermostat went ballistic.
The low on June 8 was 39 degrees -- the latest it has ever been below 40 degrees -- but the mercury would hit 100 less than a month later.
The summer of 1977 featured the most 100-degree days ever recorded in the Star City: eight. Five of those happened in a row, from July 17-21, the longest streak of 100-degree temperatures that has occurred here.
July's average high temperature of 93 degrees is still the hottest on record, and the overall average temperature of 79.7 degrees remains the third hottest month on record. Roanoke experienced its warmest night on record that month when the low only fell to 78 on July 7.
Today, 14 daily record highs and 10 daily record lows still stand from 1977.
So will we keep riding the roller-coaster into a sizzling summer, like 1977, or will we finally flatten out and have some "normal" temperatures?
We can't quite see around the next bend.
Please remain in your seat until this ride comes to a complete stop.
