By one measure of overall heat, yesterday (July 25, 2023) was the hottest day ever recorded in Albuquerque.

This is a tricky one, the sort of extreme I used to love back in my newspaper days when I needed a hook to slip stories like this past the filter of my editors. The daytime high of 103 was a daily record – the hottest July 25 in records going back to 1891.  (Can confirm that my bike commute home at 5 p.m. was unpleasant.) But it fell well short of the all time high, 107, on June 26, 1994.

But in a note sent around to CoCoRaHS observers, Michael Anand of the National Weather Service’s Albuquerque office did the full weather nerd thing for us, noting that the daily average temperature of 90 – the mid-point between overnight low and daily high – was the hottest by that measure in that aforementioned history of more than a century of record keeping.

Other records of note:

• driest start to a summer monsoon, as measured by total measured rainfall at the official airport station since June 15 – just a trace
• on track for hottest July ever, based again on that overall daily average temperature
• longest streak of temperatures never dropping below 70 – 12 days, ending July 21
• longest streak of daytime highs over 95 at 24 and counting (based on the current forecast, we’re gonna add at least 7 more days to that record)

But Michael’s news is not all bad!

Good news is that we are looking at indications of the high pressure responsible for the extreme heat to gradually weaken and shift east over the Great Plains early to mid next week allowing for temperatures to cool closer to normal for this time of the year as well as allow some monsoon moisture to enter western and eventually central NM! Let’s hope this signal pans out!