Severe Weather Week: Summer Outlook

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – What will the summer season look like? Sometimes it is difficult to predict the next 24 hours, but many of you need and want to know what the next few months will hold. So here goes!

A “normal” summer in Rochester features about nine days of 90 degrees or warmer, and about 10 inches of rain between June, July and August. Our wettest month tends to be July. We also get a handful of severe weather days, mostly with straight line damaging wind gusts from those severe storms. On occasion, we get a rotating thunderstorm that can produce a weak tornado, like we’ve seen the last few summers.

The longer range temperature outlook may keep the hottest weather in the southwestern U.S., southern U.S. and eastern U.S. We may end up on the fringe of that pattern, with a slightly warmer than normal summer. Longer range precipitation may prove to keep drier than normal conditions in the southwest, and wetter than average conditions into the Ohio Valley. This may be due to a more active storm track through the southern portion of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. We may get clipped by some of these storms as they track through the Great Lakes.

We may start the summer off comfortable with mild air, then crank up the heat and humidity, and storm chances a bit more later in the summer. In all, we may see a fairly average summer, but one that starts off slow, then turns warmer and maybe a little more unsettled. As they say – stay tuned!