Aug 5, 2020 3 min read

What a difference a year makes.

That old saying couldn’t be more true than for 2020. A friend recently joked that he was “opting out” of 2020 and possibly 2021. I remember Queen Elizabeth referring to 1992 as an “annus horribilis, which is Latin for “horrible year,” after Windsor Castle caught fire and Charles and Diana filed for divorce.

I would lay bets that Her Majesty would agree 2020 tops that on history’s list of horrible years.

Sickness, death, devastated economies, shutdowns and quarantine. It’s not just the COVID-19 pandemic that has everything upside down and sideways right now. Mother Nature had to add insult to injury with some very strange weather this year.

Our weather during 2020 has been downright odd here in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Rain, rain and more rain got us off to a wet start in spring. And have you forgotten about the snow we had in May? That seems like so long ago now because July wound up being so hot. In fact, July 2020 made the list of top 10 hottest Julys on record in Pittsburgh.

July 31 rounded out a stretch of 37 straight days with high temperatures warmer than 80 degrees. That’s the fourth longest stretch ever on record of that kind in Pittsburgh.

July also baked us with 12 days where the high temperature was at or above 90 degrees. A stretch of eight straight 90-degree days also landed in the top ten list of the temperature record books.

We’ve had 13 days hotter than 90 degrees this year. Pittsburgh’s 30-year average for 90-degree days sits at around nine each year. Last year, we only had three. The average temperature for the month was 4.7 degrees warmer than normal. That number was 77.3 degrees which is the eighth hottest on record for Pittsburgh.

Not only was July hot, it was also dry as a bone.

Rainfall for the month officially in Pittsburgh measured 0.73 inches below average. Since June 1, Pittsburgh’s rainfall has been almost two inches below normal. We’re still running a surplus of around 1.5 inches for the entire year, but July dried out conditions so much the U.S. Drought Monitor now shows abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions across all of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Remember last July?

It was soggy. We had rainfall of three inches above normal.

All I did last summer was mow the grass and wait to mow the grass in between downpours. This spring, all I did was mow the grass and wait to mow the grass in between downpours, snow and frost. The upshot is that late frost killed my dandelions without any effort from me. I didn’t apply weedkiller and now I have weeds and half-dead dandelions all over the brown and crunchy yard. At least I haven’t had to cut grass in a couple of weeks.

Then again, it gives me something to do at a safe social distance during this pandemic.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.