Summer's off to a hot start

Summer doesn't officially begin until this weekend, but meteorological summer started June 1, and it's off to a hot start in the Carolinas.

Wednesday marks the third straight day of 90-degree-plus weather, and it appears as if we're in for at least three to five more days of 90 degrees or hotter before there's a change in the pattern.

By mid-afternoon Wednesday, temperatures were in the low to mid 90s across the Piedmont and Sandhills of the Carolinas. An automated thermometer in Camden, S.C., about 80 miles south of Charlotte was showing 99 degrees at 2:30 p.m.

Technically, a heat wave is a string of three or more days with 90 degrees and above, so this is officially a heat wave.

The National Weather Service forecast a high of 94 Wednesday in Charlotte. That would be the hottest temperature in the city in two years, since a reading of 94 degrees at the end of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte -- on Sept. 1, 2012.

The hottest temperature in Charlotte last year was 93 degrees. That's a testimony to the frequent and heavy rain we got in the summer of 2013.  The rain and clouds kept the heat under wraps.