Friday, July 22, 2022 – HOT SUMMERS ARE NOT UNUSUAL, JUST SEE THE STORY
FROM THE ARCHIVES
734th Edition
Hot Days in NYC
History
and
What’s Coming
Stephen Blank
Good news and bad news. That’s the weather.
Good news is that our City temperature is not rising as rapidly as in other parts of the country. Bad news is that we’ve got other things to worry about.
The hottest day in NYC history was July 9, 1936, when the temperatures reached 106 degrees. This was the most severe heat wave in our country’s modern history, with 3,000 people dying and some 30 years before air conditioning became widely accessible..
New York Times, July 19, 1936
According to the Daily News, “heat was humanly bearable only because the humidity, at 44 percent, was low. If it were twice as high … human life would be almost impossible.” And the Times claimed that “In the canyons of the financial district men and women reported the heat waves visible.” It was so hot that Mayor Guardia let out all city employees from work at 1:45 pm and thousands of WPA workers were given a half-day. Fire hydrants were pried open in every neighborhood. In Red Hook, Brooklyn and in many other places, the hydrants lowered the water pressure so much that residents above the second floor were unable to get water in their homes. And on Park Avenue “so many hydrants were in emergency use that the waters mounted above the curb and the cars splashed through six and eight inches of it.” “In the great shopping districts in the Thirties, the pavements became so soft in the late afternoon that the crosswalks were dotted with rubber heals that were caught in the asphalt and tar as women passed by. In some spots the asphalt blistered.”
“Coney Island, the Rockaways and other metropolitan beaches again had their hundreds of thousands of city folks cooling off in salt water, including thousands who had remained all night on the Bach sand.” Tens of thousands of New Yorkers, looking for relief, slept in city parks throughout the night. The mayor authorized most parks to remain open and police were directed not to harass people who slept on benches or on the ground. And even Robert Moses flew in for the rescue, authorizing that all city swimming pools remain open until midnight.
Weather History: NYC’s Hottest Day
The 10 hottest days in New York City history, according to the National Weather Service:
1. July 9, 1936 — 106 degrees
2. July 22, 2011 — 104 degrees
(tied) July 21, 1977 — 104 degrees
(tied) Aug. 7, 1918 — 104 degrees
5. July 6, 2010 — 103 degrees
(tied) Aug. 9, 2010 — 103 degrees
(tied) July 3, 1966 — 103 degrees
(tied) Aug. 26, 1948 — 103 degrees
9. July 15, 1995 — 102 degrees
(tied) July 10, 1993 — 102 degrees
More? Since 1870, high temperatures of 100° or hotter have occurred in 31 years, about once every five years. The longest span without any 100-degree days was 16 years, between 1882-1897. More recently, there was a 10-year span between 1981-1990, and eight years between 2002-2009. In the ten-year years between 2010-12.
What about hot summers?
New York’s five hottest summers (since 1869) have all occurred since 1960: 2010, 1966, 1993, 1983 and 1999. The summer of 1966, New York’s second hottest on record, recorded the hottest average monthly high temperature. Although July 1999 was the hottest month on record based on mean daily temperature (average of the day’s high and low), the average high in July 1966 was hotter than July 1999 by 0.1-degree, 90.3° vs 90.2°. However, July 1999’s average low was 3.5 degrees warmer (72.6° vs 69.1°) and that’s what easily put it on top. Eight Julys have had a mean temperature of 80.0° or higher (the most recent was in 2020). The first time it happened was in 1952.
Another way of looking at hot summers is at the concentration of the hottest days. Records dating back to 1872 show that the most 90°days in a year has been 39 – and this happened twice – in 1991 and 1993. However, while 1991’s occurred over a lengthy span of 23 weeks, 1993’s were more concentrated, occurring over five fewer weeks. While 1991 experienced 90°temperatures during 24% of the summer season, 1993’s corresponding figure was 31%. Yet, neither of these hot summers come close to 1999. Although that year had ten fewer 90°, they were concentrated in a sixty-day period. And 1988 wasn’t far behind, with 33 90°days over 77 days (43% concentration).
No doubt, it’s getting hotter. Nationally, the average summer temperature in the past five years has been 1.7ºF warmer than it was from 1971 through 2000. But temperature increase here has been less than in other places and may be increasing slower. (Only one of the city’s hottest summers has come in this century.)
But the Western region’s temperature over the past five summers averaged 2.7ºF warmer than in 1971-2000, more than any other region in the contiguous US. And perhaps it’s getting worse. Summer in the West in 2021 was 4.5ºF warmer than the 1971-2000 avg; summer temperatures in Reno have risen 10.9°F on average since 1970, making it the fastest warming city in the nation during the hottest months.
| And we’ve not experienced the extreme heat waves that have devastated other areas: An historic heat wave in the Pacific Northwest sent temperatures climbing more than 30° higher than average. Portland broke records three days in a row, peaking at 116 °F, a heat wave that killed nearly 200 people in Oregon and Washington. So far, we’ve been spared the worst of temperature change, but bigger problems may lie ahead. Flooding. We know that sea levels along New York’s coast have already risen more than a foot since 1900 and that New York’s coastal counties are home to more than half of New Yorkers. What’s coming? Some say that by 2100, sea levels will be 18 to 75 inches higher than today along New York’s coastlines. Others: “In a worst-case scenario, much of Manhattan would be submerged by 2300” if current greenhouse gas emission rates are not curbed. A group of researchers found that, although New York City used to only have flooding of 7.4 feet or more every 25 years, that could start happening every five years as early as 2030. It also predicted a 5-to-11-inch sea level rise in New York City between 2000 and 2030. |
 https://www.nasa.gov/press/goddard/2015/february/nasa-science-leads-new-york-city-climate-change-2015-reportEven limiting global warming to a best-case scenario of 1.5° C warmer would still cause irreparable harm. Sea levels in the metropolitan area have risen by almost 9 inches since 1950, and the pace is accelerating — increasing by 1 inch every seven to eight years. Currently, 120 square miles of New York City is only 6 feet above high tide, making it prone to storm flooding. These areas are home to nearly a half-million people, 1,500 miles of road, 100 public schools — all estimated at more than $100 billion in value, according to the research organization Climate Central. Hurricane Sandy’s highest flood level was measured at 9 feet above the high tide in 2012. Extreme flooding is estimated to increase by about 20% if sea levels rise roughly 6 inches more than 2020 levels by 2040, according to the IPCC report. This fallout doubles if seas rise to nearly 2.5 feet more. |
 https://ny.curbed.com/2017/12/29/16830590/nyc-rising-sea-level-visuals-climate-centralYikes. Finally, on average each year, approximately 370 deaths are heat related. This is made up of an estimated 360 heat-exacerbated deaths, which happen when heat worsens existing chronic conditions such as heart disease, and 10 heat stress deaths, which are caused directly by heat. The average annual number of heat-related deaths represents about 2% of all deaths each warm season from May to September. We are aware that neither summer heat nor its effects are distributed evenly across the city. But perhaps that’s another RIHS article. Just to end this hot story at a different degree, what about the coldest day in New York City? According to AccuWeather, the 10 coldest days in New York City history are: Jan. 24, 1882, with 6° degrees below zero Feb. 10, 1899, with 6 degrees below zero Dec. 29, 1917, with 6 degrees below zero Feb. 5, 1918, with 6 degrees below zero Dec. 30, 1933, with 6 degrees below zero Dec. 31, 1917, with 7° degrees below zero Feb. 8, 1934, with 7 degrees below zero Feb. 15, 1943, with 8° degrees below zero Dec. 30, 1917, with 13° degrees below zero Feb. 9, 1943, with 15° degrees below zero The winter of 1934 was one of the coldest on record. It was so cold that the Raritan Bay shipping channel completely froze over, permitting folks to skate from Staten Island to New Jersey. But upstate (I think that’s the part north of Westchester) wins. According to The Weather Channel, the coldest temperature ever seen in New York State was 52° below zero set at Old Forge, a hamlet in upstate Herkimer County, on February 18, 1979. Keep Cool, Keep Dry. Stephen Blank RIHS July 15, 2022 |
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
The Peace Pagoda was presented to Londoners by the Venerable Nichidatsu Fuji (affectionately nicknamed ‘Guruji’ by his close friend Mahatma Gandhi) in 1984. Founder of the Japanese Buddhist movement, Nipponzan Myohoji, Guruji stated that ‘Civilisation is not to kill human beings, not to destroy things, nor make war; civilisation is to hold mutual affection and to respect one another’. Following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he pledged to build pagodas worldwide as shrines to peace. The Battersea pagoda was constructed by nuns, monks and other followers of the Nipponzan Myohoji sect and was completed in 1985 just weeks after Guruji died at the grand old age of 100.
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Historical Society unless otherwise indicated:
Sources
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/about/press/pr2022/heat-related-mortality-report.page
https://thestarryeye.typepad.com/weather/2013/07/how-hot-is-hot-concentration-of-90-degree-days.html
https://www.silive.com/news/2019/07/heat-wave-here-are-the-10-hottest-days-in-new-york-city-history.html
https://thestarryeye.typepad.com/weather/2012/07/revisiting-new-york-citys-hottest-summers-.html
https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2021/07/the-hottest-day-in-new-york-city-history.html
https://thestarryeye.typepad.com/weather/2012/07/a-history-of-triple-digit-heat-in-new-york.html%20
NYT, July 19, 1936
NYT July 2, 2022
https://gothamist.com/news/what-un-climate-report-predicts-nyc
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/27/this-is-what-new-york-city-will-look-like-after-climate-change/
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