The Five Places Where Summer 2016 Was Most Unbearable

Jon Erdman
Published: September 19,2016
Summer 2016 had its fair share of excessive heat, humidity, drought, thunderstorms and flooding rain.
Sweating through its fifth hottest summer - June through August - since the late 1800s, there were some locations that were stuck in a seemingly endless summer heat wave.
(MORE: Record Hottest Summer in Over 40 Cities)
Based on the magnitude and persistence of one or more of the factors mentioned above, we subjectively ranked five areas with the worst summer weather of 2016. (If you love persistently hot weather, this is a best-weather list for you, perhaps with one notable exception.)

5. California

California topped another heat record this summer, clinching its hottest June-through-August period on record dating to 1895, according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.
Thanks, in part, to the multi-year drought, the Golden State has now seen four of its seven hottest summers from 2013 through 2016.

California's Seven Hottest June-August Periods
(Data: NOAA/NCEI)

Year	Statewide Mean Temperature (degrees Fahrenheit)
2016	75.5 degrees
2006	75.4 degrees
2015	75.3 degrees
1996	75.1 degrees
2014	75.1 degrees
2003	75.0 degrees
2013	74.9 degrees

Through Sept. 10, 4,636 large fires had burned just over 200,000 acres in California in 2016, almost 500 more fires than the same period in 2015 and over 800 more fires than the five-year-average, according to Cal Fire.
If renewed water supply concerns from some low California reservoir levels wasn't enough, toxic algae blooms were observed in at least 40 state lakes and waterways in September.

4. Boston

Drought monitor analysis of the Northeast U.S. as of September 13, 2016. Areas of progressively worse drought are depicted in darker brown and red shading.
(USDA/NDMC/NOAA)

For the first time in the 16-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor analysis, parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire were analyzed in "extreme drought," the second-worst drought category, this summer.
It was the driest summer (June-August) in 144 years of records in Boston. Only 3.92 inches of rain fell in those three months combined.
If that wasn't enough, Boston tied for its fourth-hottest June through August and had chalked up 22 days of 90-degree-plus heat in 2016 through Sept. 18, nine more days than an average year.

3. Washington D.C.

The U.S. Capitol can be seen as a jogger runs along the National Mall on July 21, 2016, in Washington D.C.
(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Summers in our nation's capital are almost always hot and humid, but only the summers of 2010 and 2011 were hotter in Washington D.C. than June through August 2016.
Through Sept. 18, there were 57 days of 90-degree-plus high temperatures so far this year, a full three weeks above the average for the year (36 days).
One could argue the oppressive low temperatures made Summer 2016 most notable in D.C.
Reagan National Airport reported seven days during which the low temperature failed to drop below 80 degrees, tying 2011 for the record number of such days in any year.

2. Chattanooga, Tennessee

Locations with either their record hottest (orange dots) or second hottest (yellow dots) summer (June through August) on record in 2016. Locations with at least 60 years of data are shown.
(Data: Southeast Regional Climate Center)

We could pick any number of Southeast cities representative of the long, hot, dry summer.
So, think of Chattanooga as a placeholder for a scorching Southeast summer. Only June-August 2010 was hotter than 2016 in 138 years of records in this east Tennessee city.
The fifth-driest summer on record tilted parts of southeast Tennessee, northeast Alabama and Georgia into severe or extreme drought.
Elsewhere, Columbia, South Carolina, had the most anomalously hot summer of any Southeast city, and Athens, Georgia, had a record 52-day streak with highs of 90 degrees or hotter, according to NOAA/NCEI.

1. Southern Louisiana

Apologies to those elsewhere sweltering through a hot summer. At least you didn't have to suffer like those in flood-ravaged Louisiana.
A painfully slow-moving system resembling a tropical depression dumped over 20 inches of rain in parts of southern Louisiana and southwest Mississippi during the second week of August.
(RECAPS: Historic Flooding | Before/After Aerial Images)
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said at least 55,000 homes and 6,000 businesses were affected in some way by the floods, with an estimated cost of $8.7 billion.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, picked up 30.04 inches of rain in August 2016, crushing their previous record wettest month by over half a foot (23.73 inches in May 1907).
This occurred about five months after another epic flood event hammered northern, western and eastern Louisiana in March 2016.

Honorable Mentions

• Cleveland and Detroit: Hottest June-August periods on record.
   
• New York City: JFK Airport set a record "oppressive dew point" streak in August.
   
• Northern Indiana: Wettest summer on record in South Bend, paced by a severe flash flood Aug. 15-16; Unexpected tornado outbreak in Indiana and Ohio the following week.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7.