“It is typical to have extreme temperatures this time of year,” said Anton Haffer, the National Weather Service’s chief meteorologist for Phoenix.
Haffer said in a telephone interview that in 15 years of forecasting here, he doesn’t recall a summer when new record highs weren’t set. There’s a good reason why: Reliable records for U.S. weather data go back only to 1895. Many dots remain to be placed under the bell curve of this country’s temperatures.
Another way to put the current heat wave into perspective:
“While many daily record temperatures have been set, there have been relatively few monthly or all-time records noted in the Southwest,” said John Leslie, a public affairs officer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is the weather service’s parent organization.
“While this region is unarguably in the midst of a significant heat wave, spells of very hot weather are not uncommon during the summer months,” Leslie told LiveScience.
I’m glad to see that there is nothing to worry about. All the doomsayers are talking about the ozone. I have seen hotter, dryer summer than this.