Fresno’s heatwave last month ‘was pretty bad,’ but was it the hottest July ever?

Fueled by average low temperatures that were nearly five degrees above normal, Fresno set a record for its hottest month of July in a recorded history that goes back to the 1890s.

The average temperature for the month was a sweltering 88.7 degrees, according to the National Weather Service in Hanford, surpassing 88.2 in 2018.

“The highest average was not the warmest, so really the low temperature is what did it,” NWS meteorologist Andy Bollenbacher said. “That was cooking, pretty good. It was consistently several degrees above average. That’s what really gets the average temperature going up when you have those overnight lows that are warm. There were some days the low was 81, 82. It was pretty bad.

“That said, the warmest low temperature ever recorded in July in Fresno, the warmest low ever, was 90 degrees, and that was back in 2006, and we never hit that this year. That was the ‘06 heatwave. There were widespread cattle fatalities in the valley, and it hurt the economy because of that. All the farmers were struggling. We didn’t quite hit that level, but It was pretty bad.”

The average high temperature in Fresno in July was 103.3 degrees, which was only the fifth highest in history. It was 104.9 degrees in 1908, 104.6 in 1931, 103.7 in 1906, and 103.4 in 2006. There were only four days in the month that it did not hit 100 degrees, with a high of 114 on July 11, the third of three days in a row that it was 111 degrees or higher.

But the average low was a record 74.1 degrees; normal is 69.3. The warmest low was 83 degrees, and there were only four days in July it was lower than the normal temperature.

Farmers this year were impacted as much by drought as the heat. But in 2006, there were more than 50 deaths attributed to the searing heat, and thousands of dairy cows and other livestock perished. Several counties, including Fresno, declared a state of emergency, allowing for the dumping of dead livestock in landfills.

The average high in Fresno in 2006 was 103.4, but the average low was 72.3.

The low was 90 degrees on July 23 in the middle of a seven-day stretch where temperatures topped 109 degrees.

This story was originally published August 1, 2021 at 9:42 AM.