July 2003 Saint Cloud Weather Summary

Subject: Saint Cloud Weather Summary for July 2003

Normal? You Have to Be Kidding!

     The statistics from the Saint Cloud Regional Airport show that July 2003 had nearly normal temperature and precipitation. The total rainfall of 3.43 inches was within a few hundreths of inch of normal. Also, the average temperature of 69.6°F was nearly normal. However, there were plenty of weather information that wasn't normal.

    The temperatures may have been normal, but true summer heat contines to be lacking. The average high temperature was 80.9°F, 0.7°F below normal. There were only two days with a high of 90°F, the first two days this summer. The normal number of July 90°F highs is 4.67 days and the normal for the year through July 31 is 7.40 days.(Historic 90-Degree Highs here). In contrast, the humidity of July was reflected by the July average low temperature of 58.3°F, slightly above normal.

     The rainfall total may have been near normal, but the number of rainy days was not. There were 11 days with measurable precipitation, nearly 2 days above normal. There were also 7 days with at least 0.10 inch of rain, more than a day above normal. In addition, there were 7 other days with rain that didn't amount to 0.01 inch. All of these days during the warm season mean that showers and thunderstorms were in the area for 18 days out of the 31 days during the month.

   So, in some ways, July was another month with cooler than normal high temperatures and the frequent threat of showers and thunderstorms. Again, the cause of these persistent conditions is the upper-level pattern. The steering winds pushed into northern Minnesota and southern Canada, allowing us to have two streaks of at least 6 days with a high above 80°F (July 1-6, July 24-30). In between these two streaks, temperatures were cooler as the steering winds dropped to the south of Minnesota. Thunderstorms also remained frequent. These conditions actually are becoming more extreme the rest of this week as a storm, and its associated upper-air cold pocket, stall over Minnesota and Wisconsin. This led me to make a mid-July "rest of the summer forecast" of cooler-than-normal high temperatures and above normal rainfall. I see no reason to change that forecast at this point.

  Finally, note the addition of climatological temperature and precipitation thresholds to my climate web site. The newly posted precipitation data shows that Saint Cloud has had two-thirds of the normal number of days with measurable precipitation. Also, note on the historic 90-degree high page, that 2003 has the fewest number of 90-degree days since 1994. However, during 1976, the first two 90-degree highs happened in July, but there were 18 90-plus highs, including 10 in September. Links are provided in the tables below to more extreme temperature and precipitation data.

    July 2003 Statistics