Parched!

The newspaper headline reads "Officially Parched" when reporting the stats for the month of June and it's now five days later and nothing has changed. Actually, it's probably worse than at the end of June. Today the official temperature broke a record from 1936 and tomorrow we are expecting 103. Indiana doesn't get temperatures much above 95 very often. In fact, the average year only has 19 days when we reach 90 and above. This is not going to be a normal summer.

So here are some of the stats about the recent weather trends:
103 is the new record high for June 29
104 is the new record high for June 28
58 is the number of years since Indianapolis reached 104 degrees
78 is the number of years since Indianapolis had at least two consecutive days in June of temperatures in triple digits
15 is the number of 90-degree days in May and June, the most for that period since the Great Drought of 1988 which had 17. The record is 19 set in 1934.

June was the driest June on record for the Indianapolis area. A typical June brings a little more than 4 inches of rain. This past June Indianapolis reported .09 of an inch. I don't know if we received that much rain at our house or not. We are about 20 miles from the airport were the official precipitation is recorded. To compound the dry spell, we hardly had any moisture since May 1.

The last three mornings I set an alarm and was out the door at 6:05 and ran several miles each day rather than waiting until 8 o'clock when we arrive at the Rec Center and use the Plainfield trail system. At 6 o'clock the sun is still behind the trees but it's very bright and cooler than two hours later when the sun is shining brightly. Since there's no sunshine at six o'clock, there's also no need to put on sunscreen! After my run today, I had time to spend in the garden picking cucumbers, green beans and one zucchini while it was relatively cool. I'm still trying to use zucchini that I found in the garden earlier this week. When I overlook a squash, I find that two days later, they are enormous.