© 2024 All Rights reserved WUSF
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

It's A Record: Hottest September Ever

National Weather Service, Melbourne
The heat index chart for Oct. 2, 2018

Felt the heat these past few weeks? Meteorologist Jeff Huffman with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network can confirm that September was the hottest on record.

WUSF’s Lisa Peakes spoke with Huffman about the numbers and the science behind it.

How does the heat this past month compare to past years?

It was a hot month, not only here in Tampa, but across the entire state. More than a dozen cities, or reporting stations, had their hottest September on record.  And even more unique, or astonishing, is here in Tampa, not only was it the hottest September since records began in 1890, it was the warmest month of all months since that time.

Why was it so hot?

A couple of things contributed to the hot weather. We had more of an offshore flow much of the month, coming in from the Atlantic. And there in West Central Florida, when that wind is coming all the way across the peninsula, it does not moderate the temperatures as much as it does when it comes off the Gulf.

Also, we did not have the interruption of any tropical activity, so there weren't these days with lots of rain and cloud cover. It was just a pattern that was persisting: a high pressure ridge overhead for many, many days.

Credit National Weather Service Tampa Bay
/
National Weather Service Tampa Bay

Some of the temperatures for St. Petersburg weren't as high as Tampa's. Why is there a difference?

There's more of a water influence in St Petersburg. If you think about where it's located, it's on a peninsula and there's water on both sides. So when I mentioned that the wind had been flowing across the Atlantic, more often than the gulf this past month, that still means that wind came across the bay and tempered down the numbers just a bit for St Pete. It's because there's water on three sides of St. Petersburg and only water theoretically on one or one-and-a-half sides of Tampa.

This was a weather pattern that was projected to occur in the latter part of the summer. It lingered a lot longer than I think some of the data suggested, but it's not uncommon to get a big ridge of high pressure in this part of the nation that does not want to move, and it's  still theoretically holding strong here in to early October.

After more than 40 years learning and helping others understand more about so many aspects of our world and living in it, I still love making connections between national news stories and our community. It's exciting when I can find a thread between a national program or greater premise and what is happening at the local or personal level. This has been true whether I’ve spun the novelty tunes of Raymond Scott or Wilmoth Houdini from a tiny outpost in a Vermont field, or shared the voices of incarcerated women about what it’s like to be behind bars on Mother’s Day with the entire state of New Hampshire.
You Count on Us, We Count on You: Donate to WUSF to support free, accessible journalism for yourself and the community.