Charlotte: 16th-hottest metro area in U.S.

You couldn't prove it by this summer's temperatures, but a website that ranks the nation's cities and metro areas in various categories says Charlotte is among the United States' hot spots.

Quality of Life writer Bert Sperling's list of "Sizzling Cities" has Charlotte ranked 16th among the country's 50 largest metro areas in the category of heat and humidity.

We're hotter than Raleigh and Atlanta, incidentally.

As you might imagine, Phoenix is No. 1.

The survey (available here), released on the Sperling's BestPlaces website, ranks cities according to average high and low temperatures in summer, plus the average dew point and the relative humidity at the warmest time of day.

Humidity, for example, pushes the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metro area into fourth place, even though its average high and low temperatures are not as high as some cities ranked lower.

And overnight temperatures were included, Sperling says, because nighttime heat can be especially difficult on those suffering from hot weather.

"Nighttime heat is especially bad, because your body never has a chance to recover," says Eli Jacks, of the National Weather Service.

So here are the hottest large metro areas in the country:

1. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale

2. Las Vegas-Paradise

3. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington

4. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown

5. Austin-Round Rock

6. San Antonio

7. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach

8. New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner

9. Orlando-Kissimmee

10. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater

11. Jacksonville, Fla.

12. Oklahoma City

13. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif.

14. Memphis

15. Birmingham-Hoover

16. Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord

17. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News

18. Raleigh-Cary

19. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta

20. Richmond

At the bottom of the 50 metro large areas are San Francisco (48th), Portland (49th) and Seattle (50th).

Sperling also ranked the complete list of 361 metro areas in the country.  In that list, Yuma, Ariz., was the hottest place in the country, followed by El Centro, Calif.,  and then Phoenix.

The coolest were -- surprise! -- Fairbanks and then Anchorage.

Here is where Carolinas metro areas ranked on the overall list:

55. Charleston

75. Florence

77. Columbia

78. Augusta (Ga.)-North Augusta (S.C.)

81. Wilmington

82. Fayetteville

83. Sumter

85. Goldsboro

90. Myrtle Beach

91. Greenville, N.C.

99. Charlotte

100. Rocky Mount

102. Anderson

103. Jacksonville

113. Spartanburg

119. Burlington

123. Greensboro

126. Durham

140. Greenville, S.C.

151. Winston-Salem

234. Asheville

Don't celebrate lack of 90-degree days ... not yet

You've probably heard the statistic about the relative lack of 90-degree days so far this year in Charlotte.

Through Sunday, there had been only four days this year of 90 degrees or warmer in Charlotte. If you don't like the hot weather, I wouldn't get too excited about the rest of the season.  It wouldn't take much to make major changes in that statistic in a hurry.

Obviously, the small number of hot days is a result of the heavy rainfall we've received since the beginning of June. Clouds and storms have kept high temperatures bottled in the 80s.

As National Weather Service meteorologist John Tomko noted, it's not as if the weather has been cool.

"Even those days with highs in the low and mid 80s have been very humid," Tomko says. "The morning lows were in the low 70s most days."

If the persistent upper-level low pressure system leaves our area alone for a while, just sit back and watch high pressure do its thing.  There's a tremendous amount of moisture in the ground and the lower levels of the atmosphere, due to all the recent rain. That will serve to carve a few degrees off the daily high temperatures, but once some drying takes place, we could see a lot of 90s in a hurry.

Several 90-degree days are forecast this week, and we could see more of that later next week.

And there is still all of August and September ahead.

In 2009, when we had a relatively small number of 90-degree days (28), nearly half of those came in August (13).

The least 90-degree days in a year was 8, in 1967. We came close to equaling that mark in 2003, with 9.  The most was 88, in the brutally hot summer of 1954. And we came close to equaling that mark also, in 2010, with 87.

We had 49 days of 90 or hotter last year, down from the 73 of 2011 and the 87 of 2010.

Some wild rainfall numbers from our crazy summer

The seemingly endless string of rainy days this summer in Charlotte and elsewhere in the western Carolinas is keeping National Weather Service meteorologist John Tomko very busy.

Tomko keeps statistics at the Weather Service's office in Greer, S.C., and he's amazed at some of what has happened in recent weeks.

"It's really hard to believe, in a way," says Tomko, who has been at the Greer office for nearly two decades. "The numbers are wild."

Today's flooding in northwest Charlotte is merely the latest chapter.  In recent weeks, we've had significant flooding events in Mecklenburg, Lincoln and Cabarrus counties on June 28; in Anson, Cabarrus, Stanly and Montgomery counties on June 30; in Caldwell and Watauga counties twice last week; and most recently on Wednesday in Asheville.

And that's not a complete list.

Tomko lives in Polk County, along the N.C.-S.C. border, north of Greenville-Spartanburg.

"So far we've had 51.5 inches of rain at my house this year," he said. "That's about the average for the entire year."

Here are some other statistics, courtesy of Tomko and myself:

-- Rain has fallen somewhere in Mecklenburg County daily since June 23.

-- Since June 1, more than 11.7 inches has fallen at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Charlotte's official measuring station. That compares to 5.18 inches in an average year during that time.

-- Parts of northern Mecklenburg and Cabarrus counties have received more than 16 inches since June 1.

-- Rain has fallen on 79 of the 192 days so far this year in Charlotte. That puts us on pace for the 10th-highest number of rainy days in a year.

-- Asheville, which has received about 15 more inches than Charlotte so far in 2013, is only 18 inches away from setting a record for the whole year. The city would have to average only 2.8 inches a month for the rest of the year to break a record. That's very possible.\

-- Greenville-Spartanburg is on pace for its second-rainiest year on record.

-- Thanks to the rain and clouds, we've had only four 90-degree days this year in Charlotte. The record for the smallest number of 90-degree days is eight.  So we're likely to finish with one of the smallest number of 90-degree days in a single year.

 -- Meteorological summer runs from June 1-Aug. 31.  So far, our 11.7 inches during that period puts us on pace for the wettest summer ever.

The scary thing is we haven't entered the heart of hurricane season.  If a couple dying tropical storms were to pass through the region, we easily could pick up 4, 5 or 6 inches in a single day.

By the way, we're not alone.  Toronto set a single-day rainfall record earlier this week, with more than 5 inches falling in many parts of the city as thunderstorms repeatedly formed and crossed the area. They're under part of the same pattern that has brought the heavy rain to the Carolinas this summer.

No Chantal, but plenty of water?

Tropical Storm Chantal has confounded the experts this week and done little of what was expected.

Now the question is:  Will Chantal ever have any impact, even indirect, on the Charlotte region?

"That is not a pleasant thought to consider," says John Tomko, of the National Weather Service's office in Greer, S.C.

On Tuesday, Chantal was a feisty little tropical storm with 65 mph winds and an apparent path toward Hispaniola and Cuba.  Forecasters expected the mountains of those two islands to disrupt the storm's circulation, but they thought it would emerge this weekend over the Bahamas as a weak tropical storm.

After that, computer models were pointing Chantal toward the Southeast coast -- possibly South Carolina.

Now all that has changed.  As of mid-afternoon Wednesday, it appears as if Chantal no longer exists as a storm with circulation.  Air Force hurricane-hunting planes have been flying into the storm area for several hours, and there is no real sign of a closed circulation.

It appears as if Chantal is now just a tropical wave.  In the late-morning summary from the National Hurricane Center, meteorologist Lexion Avila said the official forecast is for the system to dissipate by early this weekend.

And, by the way, Chantal won't even cross Hispaniola.  It has taken a more westerly track and will miss the island.

That leaves a lot of questions.  The moisture from Chantal likely will remain somewhere in the Bahamas or possibly the eastern Gulf of Mexico by late this week.

Computer models predict a weakness in the atmosphere that would allow that moisture to stream northward, but the question is whether there is enough moisture left in the remnants, and exactly where that northward track would be.  Would it affect the eastern Carolinas?  Charlotte and the western Carolinas?  Georgia and Tennessee?

We don't know yet, and weak tropical systems are very difficult to predict.

One thing is for sure ... any moisture from a dying tropical system would be bad news for the water-logged western Carolinas.  Areas much farther to the west, where rain is badly needed, would appreciate Chantal's remnants a lot more than we would.

Chantal bears watching in the Carolinas

Mountains and hurricanes are not a good match, and Tropical Storm Chantal appears to be on a collision course with the high country of Hispaniola.


But it is increasingly clear that if some semblance of a tropical storm survives the trek over the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the next few days, Chantal could be a big problem for the Carolinas.

The system's threat isn't high winds and storm surge.  Rather, it could bring heavy rain into an area that doesn't need it.

Early Tuesday afternoon, Chantal's center was about 325 miles southeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was racing to the west-northwest at 29 mph -- the kind of speed that often tears apart a tropical system. Chantal, which had top sustained winds of 65 mph Tuesday afternoon, is expected to hold its own until it reaches Hispaniola later Wednesday.

A hurricane watch is in effect for the Dominican Republic, and tropical storm warnings are posted for Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and the north coast of Haiti. Tropical storm watches are in effect all the way into the Bahamas.

National Hurricane Center specialists and other meteorologists who follow tropical systems aren't sure what sort of storm will emerge from Hispaniola.  The official forecast from the Hurricane Center is for a system with 40 to 45 mph winds to come off the coast.

There will be one other big change.  Chantal will slow down -- a lot.  The high pressure system that is steering the storm now is expected to weaken, allowing Chantal to curve northwestward toward the Bahamas and the Southeast coast.

In fact, by the weekend, Chantal will be crawling.  It is expected to be in the southeast Bahamas on Friday morning and move only to the northwest Bahamas by Sunday morning.

Then what?

The computer models are coming to the conclusion that Chantal will move toward the South Carolina coast, on a northwest track.

A lot of things can happen between now and then ("then" being later Monday or Tuesday), but that track would bring heavy rain into South Carolina and either Georgia or western North Carolina.

By the way ... Another low pressure circulation is emerging from Africa into the eastern Atlantic. Some computer models predict that system will quickly take on tropical characteristics and move westward.  Chantal and the new system are Cape Verde storms, forming in the eastern Atlantic.

It's pretty early in the season for Cape Verde storms, but that might be a sign of what's ahead this hurricane season.

Still wet, but in a different way

After several days of frequent showers and mostly light thundershowers, the weather pattern in the immediate Charlotte area will change over the next few days.

We'll move to a pattern of sunny breaks, mixed with an occasional thunderstorm.  Some of those storms could be strong.

Persistent upper-level low pressure responsible for all the rain in recent days is being shoved westward. That means the steadiest rain will fall over the mountains and in Tennessee and Georgia.

In the Piedmont and parts of the foothills, we'll see a bit more sun. That will allow the atmosphere to become quite unstable, and that also means thunderstorms will be more frequent.

With more sunshine and a destabilized atmosphere, the storms could grow strong to even severe.

But we'll also see periods of sunshine, especially Friday and Saturday. A weak low pressure system might arrive Sunday. That would throw more cloudiness into the mix.  Then it's back to a typical summer pattern next week -- heat, humidity, and a chance of afternoon and evening storms.

Why this strange weather?

The pattern which has been the dominant player in Carolinas' weather this week (and, really, a lot longer) is expected to break down this weekend.

But the real question is whether things really will change for very long.

We're accustomed to seeing weather systems move west to east, or northwest to southeast. This time, the pattern is moving east to west.

Throughout the week, the Carolinas -- and much of the eastern United States -- have been in the combat zone between Bermuda high pressure and a large upper-level low pressure system centered somewhere near the Mississippi River. A third player in the weather has been an old stationary front, stuck across North Carolina.

The Bermuda high's clockwise flow of air and the Mississippi Valley low pressure's counter-clockwise flow met over the eastern United States. That strong southerly flow brought plenty of moisture into the Carolinas. And occasionally, weak low pressure systems moved along the same channel.

All of that combined to create an extended period of unsettled weather.

We've talked a lot about the heavy rain and storm damage. The rain totals actually are amazing, and I'll report on that later this week. But another part of the story has been the temperatures.

A year ago at this time, we experienced three consecutive 104-degree days in Charlotte. This year, our high temperatures have struggled to reach 80 degrees. It's because of the thick cloud cover. Believe me, if the clouds weren't there, we'd be in the upper 80s and low 90s, which is typical for this time of year.

Instead, we're about to experience a very unusual Independence Day in Charlotte.  Our highs probably won't climb above the lower 80s.

Anyways, back to the pattern change.

The Bermuda high is strengthening, and it's pushing the upper-level low farther to the west. As the Bermuda high grows stronger, it's spreading drier air into the Carolinas and along the rest of the East Coast.  Gradually, day by day, larger chunks of the eastern United States are experiencing a decrease in storm activity and an increase in sunshine.

It happened Wednesday on the Carolinas coast.  By Thursday, I expect places like Raleigh and Fayetteville to see the sun for at least part of the day. That pattern reaches Charlotte by Friday.

As that happens, the wettest weather gets pushed westward.  The mountains are in for a soaking Fourth of July, and that pattern will move back into Georgia and Tennessee over the next few days.

My question is:  Will the pattern shift back again?  Will the Carolinas and the rest of the eastern United States find itself back in the atmospheric war zone again soon?

As I've written before, the location and strength of the Bermuda high makes me a bit nervous about hurricane season.  The clockwise flow around the high could serve as a very effective steering mechanism for tropical storms and hurricanes, sending them into the Southeast Coast.