June heat caused Tennessee to swelter, caused deaths Posted: Friday, July 2, 2010 8:02 pm
By: AP NASHVILLE (AP) — The last time June was so hot in Tennessee, many people didn’t have home air conditioning and downtown movie houses advertised their chilled theaters as a way to draw in summertime crowds.
That was 1953 and it was the hottest June on record in Memphis — the second hottest in Nashville.
June 2010 ranks second hottest in Memphis and sixth hottest in Nashville — the warmest in 57 years in both. The National Weather Service said average June readings were also higher than normal in the Tri-Cities, Knoxville and Chattanooga.
July — usually hotter than June — has begun cooler than average and NWS meteorologist Andy Sniezak in Memphis said it will likely remain that way.
“For the 30-day outlook, looks like they’re calling for some below-normal temperatures for most of West Tennessee, even up toward Nashville,” Sniezak said. “It should be near normal elsewhere.”
Normal July temperature readings are in the lower 90s for highs, the lower 70s for lows.
June 2010 was a deadly month in West Tennessee with the heat contributing to the deaths of two men and a woman in separate Shelby County incidents and killing a a Madison County toddler left in a hot car.
West Tennessee repeatedly had heat advisories in June , but the official temperature never reached 100 degrees.
Still, said Sniezak, it was so consistently hot that Memphis recorded an average temperature of 84.6 degrees— 5.9 degrees above normal. The hottest reading was 98 degrees, reached on the 21st and 22nd. Memphis reached at least 95 degrees on half of the days during the month.
Published in The Messenger 7.2.10 , | 
