Dogged heat may stay at bay in August

An old farmer I knew passed away, and my part of the inheritance was a big box of old almanacs dating back to 1925. There were plenty of Farmer’s and Old Farmer’s almanacs and several other lesser-known books. A 1925 Swamp-Root Almanac came from the Carlton Drug Company. A 1948 De Laval was from Barnum Hardware (phone 38). A 1948 Rexall magazine with the “Perry Mason” show’s Barbara Hale on the cover was issued by Kinney Drugs in Carlton. A 1969 National Association of Retail Druggists book was picked up from West End Rexall in Cloquet 50 years ago. A 1946 De Laval is from Cloquet Cooperative Society No. 4 in Mahtowa. A 1940 Ford Almanac came from Cloquet Auto and Supply Company on Cloquet Avenue.

I was just reading about the accuracy of annual almanacs. Statisticians say the Farmer’s Almanac is 50-percent accurate and Old Farmer’s is 52-percent accurate. I’m not knocking either of them because my meteorology program 25 years ago taught me to forecast only seven days out. If I tried to do a whole month or year on my own, I’d be lucky to be 50-percent accurate.

The forecasts I make every month are an amalgam of data from those almanacs and what National Weather Service experts say. For August, that formula says the warm spell of June and July could come to an end. We’ve already had more temperate days this month with lower humidity. The long-range forecasters feel August will average two degrees cooler than normal and a dry spell will make rain totals an inch shy of norm.

That may be a relief to some of us who struggled with the heat of July — it was 6.2 degrees warmer than normal. So far, 2019 has seen three months warmer than normal and four colder than normal, so we have been running on average 0.25 degrees cooler than normal.

Here are the suspected trends for this month:

It should be hot and stormy the next few days; Aug. 14-24 should be cool and showery; and then we’ll be entering a dry spell with cooler-than-normal temperatures to end the month.

Dave Anderson is a meteorologist for CBS 3 TV and cbs3duluth.com in Duluth.