No Sign of 90-Degree Days As July Is Off to Cool Start

Last month was the wet one. This month has been the cool one. Through yesterday, the average July temperature in Washington has been five degrees below normal.

Counting the number of 90-degree days is a common means of assessing summer's swelter. This July, the thermometer at Reagan National Airport, Washington's official measuring station, has not recorded a single 90-degree day.

Last July, the city had experienced three days of 90-degree or higher temperatures by July 11. But so far this month, the hottest day here has been Tuesday, when the temperature reached 88 degrees. That is the normal high for July 7.

But that was the only July day when the temperature reached normal levels. On six days this month, Washington residents contended with temperatures no higher than 82. Two of those days had highs in the 70s.

The high temperature yesterday was 84 , four degrees below the normal high temperature for the date. The low of 67 degrees, reached just as the sun was rising and the cool of the night was ending, was about three degrees below normal.

So far this year, only three 90-degree days have been recorded at the airport. Two were in June, on the 25th when the temperature was 91, and on the second, when the reading was 90.

May had no 90-degree days. The year's first came in April, when the mercury hit 92 degrees on the 26th.

So far, with 192 days gone, that April day remains the year's hottest.

Last month was also slightly cooler than normal, but it was much wetter. The 5.86 inches of rain that fell at National in June was 2.73 inches above normal.

This month, not so much. Between 6 and 7 p.m. yesterday, a small amount of rain fell at the airport.

The total rainfall here in July is a little more than one-eighth of an inch. That is more than an inch below normal for the date.

At Dulles International Airport, meteorologists measured twice as much rain yesterday as at National -- two one-hundredths of an inch.

That was almost as much as had fallen there on all the earlier days of the month. It was too little to affect picnics, cookouts, ballgames and similar sources of summer fun.