Weather versus climate
As I type this post, I hear thunder outside and I can see some falling rain. Toss in a relative humidity reading, the current windspeed and you have weather.
Climate is a long-term summary of weather data. Meteorologists use a 30-year summary of the previous three decades (currently, 1981 – 2010) to determine the so-called “norm” for the year, the month, the day.
Your tax dollars at work!
The conclusions / summaries of Austin weather are derived from climate data freely-available from the National Climatic Data Center (NDCD). These are good folks, hard-working and dedicated. They make certain that the probability of bad data being entered into the summary is LOW.
OK, back to Austin
A quick-and-dirty summary of Austin’s August climate is :
- Average daily high = 97 °F (+/- 2 °F)
- Average daily low = 75 °F (+1/-2 °F)
- Average daily humidity = 64%
Would you like a little more? Here are some more Austin August averages based on data from 1981-2010.
- Number of days with daily high temperature ≥90°F = 29
- Number of days with daily low temperature ≤70°F = 2
- Wind speed = 7.4 mph
- % of sunny days = 74%
(303 hours of sunshine or
13 hours and 11 minutes per day) - Monthly precipitation = 2.4″
Some Summer records
112°F : The highest daily temperature ever recorded in Austin on 2011-08-28 and 2000-09-05.
90 : The greatest number of days with daily high temperature ≥100°F occurred in 2011.
27 : The greatest number of consecutive days with daily high temperature ≥100°F (2011-08, Camp Mabry). By contrast, as of today, we appear to have broken our streak of 19 consecutive days with high temperature ≥100°F.
We’re nearly out of the woods
The good news is that we are closer to cooler weather. The bad news is that we are not done with the hot weather, yet.
Stay well-hydrated, my friends!