The Junction City area weather can be summed up in two words, hot and dry. It wasn’t necessarily THE hottest or THE driest on record, but Chuck Otte, County Extension Agent, Retired, said that pretty much summed up the year!
The average daily high for the year was 68.6, 2.8 degrees above average. The average overnight low was 48.1, 4.1 degree above normal. Throughout the entire year, even the one month when high temperatures were below average (March), the overnight lows were consistently above average. More greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere trap the heat in at night so the planet can’t cool as effectively. March was the only month when the average temperature was below normal and then by just one tenth of a degree.
The daily mean temperature for 2023 was 58.3, 3.4 degrees above average. While 3.4 degrees may not sound like much, the 58.3 reading made 2023 the fifth hottest year on record for the area. The coldest temperature recorded in 2023 was the morning low of 5 degrees on January 31st. The hottest temperature for the year was the 112 reading on August 19th. That started a streak of 7 days with temperatures over 100 degrees.
In addition to the year being the 5th hottest, we had two other months that went into the top 5. September and December were both the 4th hottest months on record. As often happens with hot weather, we had below normal precipitation. Much of the region was under some level of drought alert for nearly the entire year. Average annual precipitation is 33.57 inches. The official rain gauge at Milford Lake Corps of Engineers office could only muster 27.11 inches for the year.
While not the driest year on record, that’s held by 1966 with only 15.61 inches, it was dry enough to make it the 23rd driest on record. January and December did manage to bookend the other ten months, and both went down with over double the average rainfall for those months. January was the 6th wettest January on record and December was the 7th wettest. The ten months in between came in over nine inches below average which took a toll on crops, pastures, lawns and gardens. It should be noted that while reliable temperature records only go back to the late 1940's, we do have reliable precipitation records dating back to 1931, or over 90 years worth.
Snowfall is normally not a significant source of precipitation for our area. Long term average annual snowfall is 18 inches which would normally only produce one and a half to two inches of liquid precipitation. The snowfall season crosses calendar years, starting in October and ending in May. The snowfall season that ended in May 2023 was rather abysmal, totaling only 4.9 inches. This snowfall season is off to a much better start, already totaling 8.9 inches, or half of what we would typically expect. Looking at the calendar year of 2023, we were still below average with 11.0 inches of snow recorded.
Chuck Otte [email protected]
County Extension Agent, Retired