South Sizzles: 90s, Heat Index Over 100!

UPDATE 3/29: Here is a final list of the records set on Sunday from the Southeast Regional Climate Center.

ORIGINAL POST:

Sunday was a heck of a hot day for the Southeast and Monday has only been incrementally better. I can tell you, from living in eastern North Carolina for a few years, you can pretty much plan on walking into a wall of heat and humidity from April to October and sometimes I wonder how I lived there. But usually it doesn't come this early in the Spring, even for the Deep South, which saw record high temperatures in the 90s Sunday with Heat Indexes over 100 degrees.

Over 90: Temps in Georgia Sunday Afternoon (See Also Southeast)

So how hot was it? It depends on who you ask. Our Kids Worst Weather page says that Alabama was the hottest spot in the entire nation on Sunday (California and Florida, you lose!):

But NOAA's daily report said Death Valley still won out:

To further confuse things, AccuWeather (and the Associated Press) were quoted in the Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle as saying:

With a high of 91 degrees, Augusta was the hottest place in the United States on Sunday, according to AccuWeather.com and The Associated Press. That was two degrees shy of the record set in 1929 but about 20 degrees higher than normal, according to Al Moore, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in West Columbia, S.C.

To further confuse things, I'll throw out the WeatherMatrix Hourly US Weather Statistics, which read the official AccuWeather database of current conditions and returns the highest value in the nation (The South won at 5 PM but lost at 8 PM to California):

That page also shows that Florala, Alabama sported a Heat Index (Apparent Temperature, combining heat and humidity) of 102 yesterday at 2 PM:

This Monday afternoon temperatures have cooled off slightly (map of temps at 4 pm) from Sunday's readings, though Alabama and Florida were tied for highest Heat Index, according to WeatherMatrix, at 99 degrees at 4 PM:

Well, there are a lot of weather stations out there, some are official, some unofficial, some don't even exist, but are rather estimated from their neighbors. Some people use different sets of stations to measure national extremes. There's also the issue of "high" temperature versus the highest temperature reported hourly, and of course methods of mathematical rounding can introduce inaccuracy.

Report a Typo