June 2010 Revisited

Compared to historical averages, June in Hood River was colder and wetter, with lower than average winds.

June easily earned the title of "Junuary", indicating that it was, technically speaking, cold. At my weather station, the average temperature of 61.3° was cooler than long term averages (61.9°), and much cooler than more recent (2000-2009) averages of 64.2°, making it the coldest June at my weather station since I started keeping track in 2000.

At HOXO, the most official Hood River station, June's average temperature was 60.7°. Oddly enough, using HOXO's data, June 2008 (which also earned the title of Junuary) was actually colder, at 60.1°. And that June was not the coldest June ever in Hood River. For example, June 1976, the month and year I moved to Hood River, the avg temperature was 58.1°. Coincidence? I think not. By the way, if you're interested, here's Hood River's official monthly temperatures, going all the way back to 1893, before thermometers were invented, when temperatures were officially measured by counting the number of cricket chirps per minute.

There was a total of 2.50" of precipitation, compared to an average June total of 0.74". Incredibly, this too wasn't a monthly record for June. That distinction belongs to June 1937, in which 4.17" of rain fell.

The 24 hour avg wind speed was 4.1 mph against an average of 4.8 mph, continuing the increasingly interesting trend of lower average wind speeds for the last 10 months. I don't know what to make of this trend, other than maybe the wind is just getting tired. Or maybe my anemometer is screwed up.

There were 3 local weather records set in June. On June 2nd, we officially received 0.70" of rain (old record: 0.24" in 1966), and on June 4th, 0.67" (old record: 0.42" in 1977). And then, as if to put an exclamation point on a ridiculously chilly month, a "low high" temperature record of 59° was set on June 16th (old record: 60° in 1946).

The tabular data below is from my home weather station. To view its June 2010 monthly summary and graphs at Weather Underground, click here.

The "historical average" numbers for temperature and rainfall are from the Hood River MCAREC data. Historical wind average is from my station's 2000 to 2009 data. Note that average wind speeds include all 24 hours of the day and night, which is why they are way lower than daytime peak winds. In addition, the wind speed at this station is considerably lower than on the Columbia River.

	High	Low	Average	Historical Average
Temperature (F)	86	43	61.3	56.2
Wind (mph)	33		4.1	4.8
Rainfall (in)	0.76		2.50 (total)	0.74

Forget Junuary. It's Endless Summer now. :)