It was above 90 degrees in the District on Sunday, for the 17th day in the past 21. In that simmering three-week stretch, two of the four days below 90 were also fairly warm, with highs of 88.
Washington, D.C
In D.C., Sunday was the 17th day over 90 in three weeks
Washington is hot in July, often memorably so. For most of the month, the city’s average daily high temperature is 90. But Sunday was seven degrees above the District’s elevated average.
Perhaps all hot days are hot in their own way. Sunday’s heat, though obvious and apparent, seemed a bit more tolerable, a bit less insufferable, because it came unaccompanied by the unpleasant humidity of the two earlier days.
The heat index, a measure of the special torments presented by the combination of heat and humidity, remained in the 90s. Unlike Friday and Saturday, it made no forays above 100 degrees.
Dew points, which also express the extent and effect of humidity, also declined on Sunday, remaining in the low 60s.
In essence, that meant the day was not simultaneously scorching and steamy. The scorch could certainly be felt, but the frequently moist and vaporous sense of objectionable sultriness, that seemed largely absent.
On Friday, the dew point just before 3 p.m. was an oppressive — if not insufferable — 74. By Saturday at the same hour, it had declined to 70 degrees. That was a descent perhaps not universally acknowledged.
But on Sunday, the difference seemed marked, with a dew point of nine degrees less, at 61.
Such small distinctions make one summer’s day different from another. They prevent each day during a hot season from seeming to merge into the next, as only another unpleasantly torrid extension of what had come before.
But in the main, these have been hot days. On Friday, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced an extended heat emergency that was to remain activated through the weekend and into Tuesday or until conditions improved.
The city encouraged residents and visitors to guard against heat-related illnesses and to check on neighbors.
Officials urged those without air conditioning to seek relief in air-conditioned buildings and cooling centers.
They said people could ask for accessible transportation to a cooling center for themselves or for others by calling the shelter hotline at 202-399-7093 or by dialing 311.