4WARN WEATHER – Last month marked the warmest July on earth in 175 years, but Michigan was actually cooler than average.

For 14 months in a row, the earth’s average monthly temps have been higher than ever before. According to NOAA, the average July global surface temperature was 2.18 degrees F above the 20th Century average of 60.4 degrees F. Africa, Asia, and Europe had their hottest Julys on record, while the U.S. saw its second-warmest July.

So where does Michigan fit into this record breaking global pattern of heat? Before I answer that question, let me take a moment to explain the difference between weather and climate.

Weather describes the short-term atmospheric conditions at a certain place and time, while climate means the average conditions in an area over a long period of time. Think of it this way: Weather can change in a few minutes or hours, climate changes over decades, or even centuries. This is important, because often when we are having a few cooler than normal days, people will respond by doubting the earth is warming. Conversely, when we have a really hot day, some people believe that is an automatic sign of global warming. Those examples are weather on a given day.

What we are talking about is climate and measuring temperatures and other data over very long periods of time.

So while the earth had the warmest July on record, the Detroit area was actually a touch cooler than normal for the month. The average high temperature for July was 82.7 degrees, while the normal temperature is 83.7 degrees. This puts July 2024 as the 71st warmest month on record.

In fact, we only had one day with temps above 90 degrees. That may surprise you, because we had a stretch of very warm days towards the end of the month. But that was because of the humidity, not the temperature. We had temps in the 80s, but because our dew points were in the low 70s, it made it feel like it was well into the 90s for several days. But the actual temperature was below 90.

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Last year, Jim Dreyer was twice foiled by bad weather when he tried to swim across Lake Michigan to mark the 25th anniversary of the first time he accomplished the feat. This year, the weather cooperated, at least at first, but he had to call off the 83-mile swim on the third day because of a battery shortage. On Tuesday, Dreyer began the swim from Grand Haven, Michigan, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, towing a dinghy with food and other supplies, the AP reports. In an account of the swim on his website, the 60-year-old says that soon after his support team visited on Wednesday, when he was on track to finish the swim in 60 hours instead of the expected 72, the batteries in the GPS in the support craft began to die.

Dreyer says he placed the bag of eight replacement AA batteries to his left, turned to the right to remove the old ones, and turned to his left to see that the bag was gone. “I tore that supply craft apart looking for them, but to no avail,” he says. “Somehow the bag of batteries must have been pitched overboard.”

• Dreyer says was less than halfway through the swim at that point, but he decided to continue, planning to navigate by his wrist compass and the stars. But, he says, he tends to experience “wild hallucinations during the second night of a continuous swim,” and that’s what happened Wednesday night.
• He says he saw mysterious lights, a Milky Way that filled the entire sky, freighters that shot back and forth, and, in what may have been symbolic, a wall that “suddenly rose up from Lake Michigan right in front of me.” He says: “I could see it vividly. It was made of large steel girders with a metal mesh in between. It’s as if some force was saying, ‘You will not pass.’”
• Dreyer says he swam through the wall and continued toward what he thought were the lights of Milwaukee but got an unpleasant surprise when the support boat arrived on Thursday.

• Dreyer learned that he had spent the night swimming in circles. While he had swum a total of 60 miles, he was still a few miles short of the halfway point, with 45 miles to go, and the weather was about to turn. From Thursday night onward, there “would be 9-foot waves in my face directly out of the west. Pulling the weight of my supplies, this current would have me on a treadmill.”
• He says he decided to call off the swim because if he ran into trouble in 9-foot waves, the Coast Guard, not the support team, would have to rescue him.
• “I did not want to call upon the US Coast Guard for rescue on the taxpayer’s dollar,” Dreyer says, “especially when the purpose of the swim is to raise funds for the US Coast Guard’s Chief Petty Officers Association.”

• “Basically, in the end, you know, I was alone in the middle of Lake Michigan with just a compass and eyes I couldn’t trust. That pretty much sums it up right there—lost the battle to my GPS,” Dreyer tells MLive.com.
• Dreyer is one of seven people to have swum across Lake Michigan, a feat that was long considered impossible, reports the Detroit Free Press. When he completed the swim in 1998, he became the second person to have crossed all the Great Lakes.
• He says he “definitely” wants to try again, but it’s not clear when. Dreyer says his other commitments include next year’s Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim, in which swimmers will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the tragedy by swimming the doomed freighter’s route from Lake Superior to Detroit.

(More Lake Michigan stories.)

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