Well thus far it's been the summer that wasn't for us here in Chicago. July 2009 is now officially the coldest ever in recorded history here in the city. As a matter of fact we're a full degree colder this month than any other previous July since the official recording site was moved away from the lake.

But its not just us, almost half of the country is going through the same thing. Almost every location that you can think of east of the Mississippi River, including Florida, is experiencing one of the coolest summers on record. The third week of July (Wednesday, July 15th - Wednesday, July 22nd) brought almost 900 record lows to cities across the country. That's right, I said almost 900! If you think that's a lot, how about this....during that same timeframe more than 1000 record low maximum temperatures were recorded. In other words it's the coldest high temperature ever recorded for that date. Combined thats almost 2000 cold records that were set last week alone!

I think what's most impressive is not the rate at which these records are falling but by how much. Lets take Tallahassee for example. Last Wednesday Tallahassee set a record low temperature of 60 degrees. That was seven degrees colder than the previous record of 67 degrees set more than 80 years ago. Think about what you just read there for a second. I said that's more than seven degrees colder than the previous record low.

Lets put that into perspective shall we. Our record high temperature for today is 103 degrees. Imagine for a moment that we broke our record high by 7 degrees today. That would mean that the high temperature would top out at a whopping 110 degrees! Could you imagine how hot and intense that would feel!? That would be stifling and unbareable! Well believe it or not it's just a small sliver of the magnitude of just how cool, relative to average, that this airmass really is.

It does have its advantages though. Here in Chicago the price of natural gas is down more than 30% this month because of the lack of air conditioning use. ComEd has stated that on average, your energy bill has a savings of a little more than $50 from this same time last year. But this is the time where we expect the heat. A time where we really dont mind the heat. As a matter of fact, although the weather has been beautiful as of late, many of you would like it a little warmer so you can lay out on the beach. Unfortuantely, the chilly weather (relative to average) shows no signs of releasing its grip anytime soon.

So far July has brought Chicago a whopping 15 days with temperatures 79 degrees or cooler. Keep in mind that the AVERAGE high temperature for this time of the year is 84. Just how rare is that you ask? That's so rare that it's only the fourth time that this has happened since the 1880's when records began.

If you go back and take a look at the analogs from previous years, given the pattern that we're in,  it would suggest that August will follow suit. The wonderful thing about that would be even though it may not be as hot out there as you would like, at least we have silenced all of the global warming fanatics for a while. In case you didn't know, last year was the coolest year, globally, in a long time. This includes land and ocean surface temperatures.

 This year, however, will NOT be as cool as last year overall even though we're seeing even colder temperatures right now. That's right, it will NOT be as cool. The reason why is because of the tremendous warming of the equatorial Pacific waters thanks to El Nino. The average temperatures of the equitorial Pacific have warmed more then 4 degrees since May 1st. The Pacific Ocean is enormous. So when it comes time to average out all of the temperatures around the world and compare the numbers this will rank on the warm side of things again. The funny thing is that water doesn't have the same characteristics as land. It takes quite some time to warm or cool water as opposed to land surfaces. Therefore it wouldn't surprise me one bit if we were warmer again overall next year as well.

But now you know why and we will certainly all remeber how chilly, relative to average, it has been. So when the final statistics show that we were significantly warmer this year than last year and you start hearing all of the global warming phanatics yelling and screaming remember this blog. El Nino is a naturally occurring warming event that happens every 4 to 7 years. This chilly weather that is occurring right now, according to records, only happens every 40 to 60 years! So you make the call. Is it really global warming? Or are we in a larger global cycle? One of which man has not been around long enough to judge whether we're warming or not?