HOULTON, Maine — For the first time in several years, Houlton resident Heather McMann said residents in the state experienced a “near perfect” Maine summer.
“It felt like we just had a number of days each week where the sun was always shining, and we got just enough rain to keep the wells full and the flowers blooming,” McMann said in a Sept. 12 interview. “We also had great weather over the Fourth of July, so that was nice, too.”
McMann’s assessment is in line with the summer climate narrative from the National Weather Service in Caribou, which reported that northern and eastern Maine saw above-normal temperatures from June 1 through Aug. 31. The region also received above-normal rainfall across the north and significantly below-average rainfall over Down East portions of the region.
Rich Norton, meteorologist at the National Weather Service Caribou office, said last week that the temperatures and rainfall this summer were not attributable to any particular weather pattern.
The weather service said that most locations averaged one to two degrees above the average high temperature over the last 30 years, with consistency of warmth rather than episodes of extreme heat being the norm throughout the summer.
Meteorologist Tony Mignone said that Caribou saw an average high temperature of 75.7 degrees during June, July and August, up from the 30-year normal of 74 degrees.
The northern Maine city also saw 35 days of temperatures that were more than 80 degrees in June, July and August, with three more such days occurring in May and three in September, resulting in a total of 41 days over the five-month stretch. That 41 days is well above the warm season average of 26 days of above-80 temperatures for the five-month period, according to the report. There were no 90-degree days recorded in Caribou this summer.
In Bangor, the average high temperature during the three-month summer period was 78.3 degrees, up from the 30-year normal of 77.3, according to Mignone. The city saw 59 days that were more than 80 degrees this summer, and two days that hit 90 degrees, which was two days below the long-term average of four days.
Forecasters said that the only notable cool spells over the summer took place between June 1-19 and July 7-10.
Rain was much more plentiful in northern Maine, according to Norton, with Caribou receiving 15.18 inches of rain during the three-month period, 3.86 inches above the normal of 11.32 inches. It was the 11th wettest June-through-August period since records began in 1939.
