Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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What was the hottest summer of your life?

Now that we're in another stretch of hot days near the peak of a summer season that will most likely not go down as a historically hot one here in Southwest Virginia, perhaps it's a good time to reflect on that.

For many of you, what you consider to be the hottest summer has less to do with any climatological records than with what you were doing that summer. Perhaps you were involved in highway construction, football three-a-days, military basic training or something else that kept you exerting energy in the sun all day long.

It might not have been one of the hottest summers on record where you were, but because it seared your soul, it stands out as the hottest of your life.

For me, it was the summer of 1980, when I was 10 years old in Arkansas. Most days in July and August reached 100, and some got as high as 110. That was the summer the Myatt family got air conditioning. We didn't have it to start out, getting through several 100-degree days and 80-degree nights in July with a few box fans.

So, yes, I know what it's like not to have air conditioning in a sizzling summer. I'll take the A/C, thank you very much.

But what was our hottest summer, strictly by the numbers, in Roanoke?

Using the best available data, the official readings from Roanoke Regional Airport that date to 1948, the answer is that it depends on what criteria you use to determine the hottest summer.

If it's simply when it got the hottest, that's easy: 1983, with a high of 105 on Aug. 21. It hit 104 on Aug. 20 and Aug. 22. There's been nothing close to that three-day stretch for sheer intensity of heat in Roanoke, at least since 1948.

If it's when it hit 100 most often, then 1977 was the hottest summer. Eight days in 1977 reached or exceeded the century mark, occurring in two streaks: July 6-8 and July 17-21. A third 100-degree streak was narrowly avoided when it hit 99 on three consecutive days from Aug. 6-8.

Summer 1977 also included the all-time record for warmest low temperature in Roanoke, 78 on July 7. What's weird about 1977 is that the low temperature just a month earlier on June 8 was 39, the latest low below 40 degrees on record. How quickly it went from the refrigerator to the frying pan.

If it's all about the average high temperature for the summer, then 1953 is your winner. Using the simple meteorological definition of summer as June 1-Aug. 31 (which also roughly mimics the popular Memorial Day-to-Labor Day concept of summer), 1953 had an average high temperature of 89.1 degrees.

There were seven 100-degree days in 1953. It was part of a three-year stretch that produced 14 days of 100-degree highs, including the earliest (June 27, 1952) and latest (Sept. 5, 1954) 100-degree days on record.

The summer that ranks second in average high temperature ranks first in overall average temperature, counting both highs and lows. That was 1987, a relatively unheralded hot summer that averaged 77.32 degrees, almost three-quarters of a degree above second-place 1959.

It hit 100 just once in 1987, on Aug. 22, but the summer heat of '87 had more the consistent pace of a marathon rather than the torrid run of a sprint. Half of the days from June to August, 46 of 92, hit 90 degrees. July 20-26 had a run of seven days at or above 96, including two at 99 and three at 98.

So 1983, 1977, 1953 and 1987 each have a claim on being Roanoke's hottest summer. But so does 2005.

That's right -- last summer was the hottest, if you only look at low temperatures, with a muggy average of 67.25 degrees, nearly a degree and a half above second place 2002. July and August 2005 each had the warmest average low temperatures ever recorded in Roanoke for those months.

Your hottest summer may have been one of these, or a different one, perhaps somewhere else or for entirely different reasons. Feel free to drop me a line and tell me about your hottest summer and why it was. I might use some of them in a future column.