A big welcome to Autumn, which slinked in at 4:31 this morning. This is especially welcome, not because our temps are likely to drop precipitously for another couple of weeks, but because this long, hot summer in the Valley of the Sun was the hottest on record:

…the average temperature for June through August was 95.1 degrees.

That beats the previous average summer record high – 94.9 degrees in 2007. This year and the past two years account for 3 of the top 10 years, and the weather service says it’s due to urbanization.

The explanation is that overnight temperatures aren’t as low as they formerly were because the atmosphere in what’s called an “urban heat island” has a harder time radiating heat and cooling off.

The weather service reports that the 2013 average summer maximum temperature was 106.4 degrees while the average minimum was 83.7 degrees.

It certainly doesn’t help things that all our roads are being repaved in black coating instead of a lighter color. Seems to me growing up that lots of roads were paved in a kind of gray, almost white pavement, I can’t understand why they can’t do that here. Same thing with roof tiles, as I see lots of dark reds and oranges being used when it would make more sense to encourage the use of sunlight-reflecting materials and colors to counter the urban heat island effect. It’s hard to believe when old-timers around here (i.e., those who have lived here more than twenty-five years talk of summer nights being “cool”.

The pool has stayed quite swimmable with the nights staying so warm, but this week the nighttime temps will drop into the 60s, meaning the 86 degree temperature I took a swim in at 10 PM last night will soon be a memory. The days have been hot – right around 100 – and I can tell you it was damned hot moving dirt and rocks around in the back yard yesterday afternoon. But today and this week the daytime temps will be in the low 90s – not exactly “Arizona winter” just yet, but we’re getting damned close, that’s just 2 or 3 weeks away.