* 41.13 inches is how much rain Springfield, Mo., has already received this year. That is an excess of over 18 inches!
* 80 is how many days St. Louis has had precipitation so far this year. That is not far short of every-other-day.
* 62 inches was the snow depth at Rogers Pass, Mont., on the morning of January, 20, 1954, when the coldest temperature ever officially recorded in the Lower 48 USA. (70 below zero)
* 24 inches was on the ground at Rogers Pass when another weather geek from Stroudsburg, Pa., and I visited and photographed the very remote site.(April) The pictures that I took were the only ones ever made. I furnished copies to the USWB Forecast Center in Helena, the regional office in Salt Lake and to USWB Headquarters in Washington. It had not been renamed National Weather Service at that time. (I will write a complete story one day. We not only visited Rogers Pass, but also Fraser Colorado and West Yellowstone, Mont., trying to see some of the traditional cold spots of the west)
* 10 inches of rain in the last five weeks in Indianapolis.
* 1/4th of one percent was how much of the “Lower 48” was snow covered this morning. All of that is in the high country of the west.
* 293 inches is the snow depth at Swift Creek, Wash., in the Cascades. This is one of those high elevation automatic snow measuring stations. The information is valuable in the forecasting of snow melt and runoff not to mention avalanche danger.
* 196 inches was the snow depth at Little Warm, Wyo., at an elevation of 9.377 feet. Now isn’t that an ironic name for such a place. Little things hang in your memory. I well remember standing by our national teletype circuit at the USWB, Birmingham Airport late one night in the early 1960s, when a Flash Flood Warning for Roaring Springs, Texas came over the wire from the USWB in Fort Worth.
* 33 in a row is how many days Tuscon exceeded 100 degrees by July 9 in 1987–an all time record for that SE Arizona City. Ironically, on that very morning, they had a record low of 68. Tuscon is not as hot has Phoenix because of elevation differences. (From Bill Murray)
* 30 of the 31 days in July, 1954, had highs in the 90s at Birmingham Airport. July 22 was the “coolest” day with 87. The average high for the month was 95.
* 4 days that month were over 100 and 11 days were 95 or hotter. 95 is my personal number to say “very hot.”
* 96 was the average high in Birmingham two years earlier in July, 1952. Nine days had over 100 including 7 days in a row. The summers of both 1952 and 1954 were exceptionally hot and featured a drought. (Heat waves and droughts are first cousins) Some Alabama wells went dry that had never been dry before.
* 1980 had a July that we all want to forget. The average daily high was 96 but at mid-month there were 8 days in a row above 100 including three with 105 or hotter. It was 106 on the 13th. During that eight day stretch no rain fell at Birmingham Airport. (none, zero, zilch) There were lot of heat related deaths and James Spann did the weather live one evening from a super market meat locker. In a twist of fate, as the heat wave broke here, I was scraping ice off my windshield with my First National Bank of Birmingham VISA card at Duck Creek, Utah. We camped at that high elevation spot in South Utah all week and departed for Birmingham missing all the intense heat.
* 9.60 inches is the 2008 rain shortfall for Montgomery as of this morning. Anniston Airport got about 1.50 inches last Saturday and their deficiency has “improved” to 6.18 inches.
* 55 percent of livestock in Alabama was rated in good condition and 26% fair as of yesterday as reported by the weekly Crop Progress and Condition Report from the USDA, Alabama Field Office. Only 14% of the pasture and range land was rated poor. That is much better than last year at this time but there has been some downturn lately.
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