Hottest Day Ever Recorded

Today will go down in the record books as the hottest day ever in Little Rock's history.  Ever since the records have been kept in 1877, the hottest temperature was recorded on July 31, 1986 with a staggering 112 degrees being the benchmark.  Not only did we tie the record at one point, but we beat the record by an amazing two degrees and ended up at 114 degrees for the day.

What happened?  Well, we knew today was going to be hotter than yesterday but not by this margin.  There wasn't a single meteorologist out there who thought we would be hitting 114.  Having said that, the reason for the intense heat to strike Central Arkansas was a culmination of several ingrediants coming together at the right moment. 

First and foremost, a strong area of high pressure was and is directly overhead.  This high pressure coming in around 20,000 feet helps to develop suttle sinking motion in the atmosphere.  Basic meteorology tells us that when you sink atmospheric air it heats up incredibly fast (especially in the summer time) and in our case it soared.  The fact that we had this heat machine aloft was the main reason we got to the triple digits.  Another factor that played into all this mess was the fact that we saw plenty of sunshine today.  Early this morning we had to fight through some cloud cover to see the sun.  Yet, as time rolled along to the noon hour the clouds quickly dispersed and left us sizzling in the heat.  The incredibly dry soil was another factor that played into it feeling like a oven outside.  Last but not least, our surface moisture wasn't as high today.  Since we had less moisture to deal with, temperatures were allowed to sky rocket past 110 degrees.

So many of you are wondering how long will this brutal heat wave remain in Arkansas?  After throughly looking at several computer models and the various sorts of weather data I can honestly say it won't change soon.  The upper level high will stay with us the rest of the work week.  It won't move westward until the latter half of the weekend.  That means temperatures will be consistantly above 100 at least until we get to next week.



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