2011-Weather-July

The first day of July brought these omnious clouds to the Chicagoland area.  However, over the next few weeks we received little to no rain and endured hot and humid days as seen in this graphic.  Since June 22 we have only received 0.06″ of rain which caused moisture stress in the first layers of soil which turned our lawns brown.  However, on the morning of July 11 we received approximately 0.4″ of rain which was a welcomed relief, however it also brought powerful winds bringing down trees and power outages for nearly 868,000 homes.  This “Derecho” gave us cooler temperatures for a moment.  Just when power was restored to the last customer, we received a heat wave that hasn’t been felt in 6 years.  Really feeling the heat, humidity and lack of rain, the “Ring of Fire” weather system dropped a “Deluge” on us over a two day period with one of the days becoming the wettest day in history.  Ending in July we received more rain and high temperatures that resulted in wettest month on record and the third hottest.