Excerpt from the July 2014 Alabama Climate Report:
July was cool. To paraphrase the Tonight Show audience, how cool was it?
Pretty cool. We saw three legitimate cold fronts arrive from the north, setting several records for both daily low temperatures and for cool daytime highs. In Montgomery, where weather observations go back to 1872, the all-time July record low temperature set in 2009 was tied at 59° F on Wednesday, July 30.
Both Muscle Shoals and Hamilton, with substantially shorter weather records, saw their coolest high temperature records for the month of July broken, when each saw a day with the high temperature of only 71° F.
There were some noteworthy readings scattered about the state. Scottsboro set a daily record for July 14, when the temperature dropped to 49°. That broke the previous record for that day, 55°, which was set on July 14, 1897! When you break a record that stood for more than 110 years and you do it by six degrees, that's noteworthy.
Hamilton's climate record isn't as long, but the record-setting chilly high temperature on July 19 was also noteworthy. Not only was it Hamilton's coolest July high on record, it broke the record for July 19 by 14 degrees!
Huntsville and Tuscaloosa each saw their daily record low highs for July 18 broken by eleven degrees, as did Gainesville on July 19.
- John Christy
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