If summer is supposed to be sunny and warm and green, then the summer of 2010 should go down in Northland history as one of the best.
Duluth had 83 days with sunshine in June, July and August and only nine days that were cloudy most of the time. July had no officially cloudy days at all.
And it must have rained mostly at night, because we managed to get more rainfall than normal despite the sunny skies, and more than enough to keep most yards and gardens and forests lush and green. Duluth received 14.59 inches over the three months of meteorological summer, 2.45 inches more than average.
"The kind of convective rain we got comes fast and hard, but it's over fast. It's not like the all-day rains we get some years. It was almost like living down south," said Tom Lonka, assistant forecaster at the National Weather Service in Duluth.
Adam Bohlman, a Duluth charter boat captain, said he was able to get out on Lake Superior "nine out of 10 times we wanted to, and that's pretty good. We really didn't have any of those big Nor'easters that we do most summers, where you can't get out to fish."
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Judy Gibbs, who is outside most every summer day for most of the day, noticed how well the trees and plants thrived this summer as she was clearing overgrown trails at Duluth's Hawk Ridge observatory earlier this week.
"The vegetation loved the warm days and regular doses of rainfall. It's lush and crowding the trail," said Gibbs, an urban forester working in Duluth under the Americorps program. "Personally, it was so nice to not have to water any garden at all this summer. And this heat is helping everything produce so well."
Gibbs said she was surprised by the lack of mosquitoes for much of the summer, at least during the day, and she's predicting a bumper crop of fall mushrooms -- another lingering benefit of a warm, wet summer.
Summer was warm, too, tied for eighth warmest since records have been kept. June was average for temperature, but July and August were 3.5 and 4.4 degrees above normal respectively.
Yet it wasn't oppressively hot. There were no single-day high temp records set and Duluth never did hit 90 at the airport, although there were several 90-degree days across the region and some days brought soggy humidity levels.
And that warmth lingered, as Duluth tied a record with 46 straight days -- June 29 to Aug. 14 -- where temperatures rose into the 70s or higher, matching 1877. It was only the second time in 137 years of records that Duluth hit 70 every day in July, or any other month for that matter.
The ample rain had Northland golf courses in mint-green condition with no need to water. And most every day had enough sun to allow a round or two for avid golfers.
Steve Stojevich said Nemadji Golf Course in Superior is in better shape than he's ever seen it, and he's been golfing there since 1965.
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"It was a great summer for us. We golf early in the morning and we got on almost every day," he said.
It was warm so early and so long this year that even Lake Superior's surface waters hit a record temperature. The big, usually frigid lake hit 68.3 degrees on the surface as recorded by three buoys operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That's about 13 degrees above normal for mid-August, when the record was set.
Still, there were some bad weather issues.
The Duluth Huskies baseball team was rained out nine times, with ill-timed rainstorms hitting on just the wrong days (home games) at just the wrong time (game time). Duluth received much of its summer rainfall in downpours that caused some minor flooding and sewage overflows.
There also was tornado damage around some northern Wisconsin lakes, and two storms that produced baseball size hail in Koochiching County.
At the tip of the Arrowhead, Cook County remains the lone area of the Northland that's unusually dry, with a lingering drought that has left forests parched and lakes and streams well below average levels.
Statewide, 2010 will be known as the summer of tornadoes, with 145 preliminary reports, an all-time record for Minnesota, including 48 reports on June 17 alone. Several areas of the state suffered damage, especially near Wadena, although the Northland escaped most serious problems.
