List of new Tri-Cities temperature records from the July 2022 heatwave

The heatwave that gripped the Pacific Northwest since the last week of July is finally drawing to a close, leaving behind several new temperature records. This event came during what is climatologically the hottest time of the year for the Tri-Cities meaning that the bar was already pretty high for temperature records.

This heatwave extended into the first few days of August, but for convenience and to avoid confusion with a heat wave forecast in the coming days I will refer to it as the July 2022 heatwave in this article instead of July-August. Records for the Tri-Cities go all the way back to 1894.

CONSECUTIVE DAYS

The most impressive thing about this heatwave was how long it lasted. New records were set for both consecutive 100° days and the record for 105° days was tied:

• Consecutive days above 100°: New record is 11 (July 24-August 3, 2022). Old record is 10 (August 11-20, 1967).
• Consecutive days above 105°: This heatwave brought 6 (July 26-31, 2022), tying the old record (July 13-18, 1911).

There has been some discussion about whether or not the 1967 heatwave really was 10 days long. The official data from NOAA shows that the high on August 10 in the Tri-Cities was 99° and the high August 21 was 96°. At these temperatures, it is entirely possible that there were stations that hit 100° on those days, but the official number of 100°+ days from that heatwave stands at ten.

DAILY RECORD HIGHS

The peak heat from this event coincided with Water Follies weekend with several not-as-hot days on either side. Here are the two new daily records:

The monthly record high for July, which stands at 115°, was not broken.

DAILY RECORD WARMEST LOWS

While it was more humid than usual during the heatwave, thanks to monsoon moisture being pulled north, it was not humid enough to force record warm low temperatures. No new records for this parameter were set during the event.

JULY TEMPERATURE RANKING

The duration and strength of the heat wave helped to push July to become one of the hottest (but not the hottest) on record by some measures. Here is a table of rankings for parameters that I found most interesting. Note that years with more than three days of missing data are omitted.

DATA SOURCE

The historical data for this article was pulled from this NOAA tool, which has a wealth of information. The location I used is Tri-Cities area (Pendleton, Oregon CWA). Featured image: Shutterstock/VladisChern.