Happy New Year and welcome to 2020! Let's take a look back on the year that was. From extreme heat and cold snaps, and drought to flooding, 2019 sure had it's fair share of ups and downs.
2019 was Lexington's warmest year on record with an average temperature of 58.6°. This topped the previous warmest year by only a tenth of a degree. Interestingly this was not the warmest year based on the mean high temperature. 1938 still holds the top spot. No surprise, July was the warmest month and January was the coldest. However, the warmest day of the year came on September 10th when the temperature climbed to 100° for the first time since July 2012. There were 60 days with highs of 90 degrees or warmer, the fourth most. We set a record the most 90-degree days in the month of September with 19. The coldest temperature of 2019 was 2° on the final day of January.
We followed up the wettest year in 2018 with the 16th wettest year in 2019. Lexington collected 56.04" of total precipitation and 10.5" of snow. The year began as if we were on pace the break the brand new record. Then a dry spell through the end of the summer. It's remarkable that we recorded a top 20 wettest year considering that we didn't receive any measurable rainfall in September. That has never happened before in Lexington weather history. Not only was it the driest September on record, but also Lexington's driest month. The dry conditions last fall lead to a "flash drought." Severe and extreme drought conditions spread very quickly across central and eastern Kentucky. The rain came in October. Almost as quickly as we entered a drought, we got right back out.
