June possesses many pleasant associations. But with its arrival, tension grows in the D.C. area about the onset of summer’s less widely welcomed features, such as 90 degree heat and sticky, strength-sapping humidity.
Washington, D.C
The Washington area steered close to sticky summer on Tuesday
Certainly, things seemed to be heating up. At Dulles International Airport, the mercury did touch 90, a kind of threshold to a typical D.C. summer. At Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, the high also reached 90.
But the District posted an official high of 88. Although 2 degrees short of 90, it nevertheless was 6 degrees above the average high for the date.
Moreover, the heat index, the feels-like temperature that factors into heat and humidity, did come to 90 degrees in the District at 3 p.m.
On Tuesday, while not yet seeming so sultry as to evoke dismay, conditions seemed adequate to renew the area’s humidity consciousness. As an atmospheric menace, humidity had been dormant in recent days, so inoffensive as to be significant only for its absence. It was more noticeable Tuesday.
Of course, with only 16 days until the summer solstice, the sun shone with more intensity than on any previous day of the year.
It climbed a little higher in the sky, producing more heat and a kind of extra brightness, that seemed far greater than necessary to provide the light of day.
At this point in the year, daylight is growing close to its maximum extent. It lasted for 14 hours and 46 minutes on Tuesday, according to timeanddate.com. On the day of the solstice, the day of maximum daylight, it will persist for only eight minutes more.
On Tuesday, timeanddate.com said, the sun went down at 8:29 p.m. But on Wednesday, it would be 8:30 p.m.