Arkansas Storm Team Weather Blog: Will we hit 100° this summer?

I know what you’re thinking… duh, of course, Little Rock will reach 100° this summer. But, 4 out of the last 10 summers we didn’t reach the triple digits! This is hard to believe considering we hit 100° 32 times the last two summers.

The last two summers were not normal, they were both about 2° warmer than average. This was mainly caused by low rainfall. Much of the past two summers feature prolonged periods of drought.

The drought conditions lead to lower levels of humidity in the air, and drier air can heat up much faster than humid air. Think of it like a lake in the spring, the air temperature might be 90° but the lake is still at 50°. This is why locations in the desert southwest can reach temperatures over 120°!

Arkansas is known for its humidity and this humidity is what keeps temperatures out of the triple digits. To have higher humidity, we need consistent rainfall.

This is what happened in 2016 through 2021. All those summers had below-average temperatures and above-average rainfall. During those 5 years, Little Rock only reached 100° 7 times. 5 times in 2016 and 2 times in 2018.

I plotted the data over the last 30 years, and you can see that during years of above-average rainfall, the temperature tended to be cooler, and during years of below-average rainfall, the temperatures tended to be warmer.

So, if you are hoping for a cooler summer, then you should hope for more rainfall!

Overall, we have about a 30% chance of NOT hitting the triple-digits this summer. In the last 100 years, we didn’t make it to 100° in 32 of them.

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