New England Hottest Nationwide at 99 Degrees

*UPDATE: A couple readers have said that Hartford did not get to 99 - here is my reasoning on that. Also at that link, the NWS has added a city in Arizona at 99 yesterday which they didn't list earlier, so I guess we can only say that Hartford tied yesterday for hottest spot in the nation.

ORIGINAL REPORT:

Via official airport observations, Hartford and Bradley, Connecticut set the highest official temperature in the Northeast yesterday at 98 degrees based on the 20-minute observation points, which are shown below (map by MesoWest).

However if you look closer at the data, they both officially declared 99 degrees, presumably in-between observations. Turns out, this was the highest temperature in the nation yesterday!* 90s were prevalent over most of coastal New England and parts of eastern Quebec. Temperatures at 5 PM Eastern Wednesday are shown below.

Heck, there were even 90s in the mountains - extremely high Mount Washington set a new record at 65. About two dozen other high temperature records were broken in the Northeast - you can get more information on the records in our news story about the heat.

The 90s extended into Canada; according to AccuWeather.com Professional, Ottawa, Ontario had their second record-breaking day with 93 degrees. In their entire recorded history, the thermometer had never risen above 91 before June 7th.

Even here in Central Pennsylvania, away from the main extreme heat, I hit 88 at my weather station. The local airport only rose to 86 degrees, not reaching the record of 88, but that was 5 degrees above the normal high temperature at the peak of the summer.