In the previous post, I commented about the Goldilocks temperatures over the past two weeks. In my view, they were ideal for avoiding the use of home heating or cooling.
That said, they were not Goldilocks from a climate perspective. In fact, this May is going to go down as the warmest on record at Salt Lake City. With one day left to go (today), the average temperature for the month is an incredible 67.1˚F. That eclipses the prior record set in 1934 of 66.7˚F.
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Source: https://xmacis.rcc-acis.org/ |
The 67.1˚F will likely go up a bit more today.
I actually found this a bit surprising because there hasn't been any exceptional heat. However, May has been characterized by relatively little variability in large-scale weather systems compared to normal. Instead we've simply had sustained warmth. In the plot below, the range of "normal" (i.e., averages for 1991–2020) is indicated by the green background. This May, we had only 5 days with a maximum temperature below average and only 4 days with a minimum temperature below average.
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Source: NWSFO |
Since I always get questions about the veracity of the airport temperatures, below is a graph of the monthly mean temperatures at Bountiful Bench, with continuous records back to 1975. With one day left to go, this May rates as the 2nd warmest (63.6˚F) behind only 1992 (63.9˚F).
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Source: https://xmacis.rcc-acis.org/ |
We will probably end up just behind 1992 at that location (by about 0.1˚F) based on last night's minimum and the forecast high for today.