Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Reno sets record for hottest summer second year in a row

RENO — For the second year in a row, Reno sizzled through its hottest summer on record.

The average daytime high for June, July and August was 93.6 degrees. That's one-third of a degree hotter than the previous record set in 2017, according to the National Weather Service.

The mercury reached 90 degrees or higher on a record 56 consecutive days ending Aug. 25. It reached the century mark 20 times. That also broke the old record of 16 set the year before.

The mean average summer temperature averaging the daily highs and lows was 76.9 degrees. That's just short of the record of 77.2 degrees in 2017.

The average low also was the second highest recorded — 60.1 degrees compared with 61.2  in 2017.

"The trend is continuing, where the overnight minimums trend has been much more significant than the daytime maximum," Dan McEvoy, a climatologist at the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, told the Reno Gazette Journal.

The mean average at Lake Tahoe in Tahoe City, California, was 62.4, slightly higher than the previous record of 62.3 set in 2017.

The average overnight minimum was 46.2 degrees, the second warmest recorded just behind the 2017 record. The average daily high at Tahoe City was 78.6, the seventh highest on record.

The summer numbers are part of a broader trend of human-induced global warming.

Seventeen of the last eighteen hottest years recorded in 136 years of record-keeping have occurred since 2001, according to NASA.

In Reno, 12 of the 15 hottest summers measured by daily high have happened since 2001. When it comes to warm overnight lows, the 15 warmest have occurred since 2001. And the 15 overall warmest summers, as shown by an average of daily highs and lows, have all occurred since 2001.