I can’t hold back, Corey, I’ve got to let folks know there is relief in sight. Before we start talking about how hot it’s been, and we all know how hot it’s been, the good news is it seems to be coming to an end today. Corey Davis, of course, my guest from the State Climate Office of North Carolina. Corey, though it has been brutally hot. Can you put this into some perspective for us?

“Yeah, I can. Mike, you know, even before this past week, when that extreme heat has come back, it had still been a pretty warm July overall. We were talking about one of the top three warmest Julys on record in places like Raleigh. And now, after we’ve been through that week of extreme heat, it’s now up to the warmest July on record in Raleigh, one of the top five warmest in places like Asheville, Greenville, North and South Carolina, and then down at the coast of Myrtle Beach. So especially over this past week, that heat has been unavoidable. But like you say, there is some good news. It is finally coming to an end, and we’re going to have some more comfortable weather over the next week.”

And looking back over the month of July, which just ended yesterday, it was not only hot, fairly wet as well. How does that compare?

“Well, Mike, I’m starting to think Mother Nature is just reusing the same scripts, because the way July played out, it was a lot like June. June started with some wet weather, and then by the end of the month, we had a week-long heat wave. We’ll look at July. We also started with very wet weather, especially from Tropical Storm Chantal, but also just from the daily pop-up showers and thunderstorms. And then again, we ended with that week of extreme heat. But looking at those rainfall totals in particular, most of North and South Carolina are at or above their normal rainfall for the month of July. Some of the wetter areas, like Greensboro and Columbia, South Carolina, there’s several inches above normal for the month, but we do also have some dry pockets. Areas like Fayetteville and Greenville, North Carolina, finished about an inch below normal. We’re not yet really worried about dryness there. They weren’t too bad off, but as we get into upstate South Carolina, Greenville, Spartanburg, those areas, they were two to two-and-a-half inches below their normal rainfall over the past month, and we’ve actually seen some drought creep back in on the map in those areas this week. I know there’s not too many impacts associated with that. Now, some of the stream levels have dropped a little bit. Soil moisture levels have also dropped a little. But this is a time to be thankful that we had so much wet weather earlier in the month of July, and even late in June, because that really built up our moisture reserves and kept us from seeing more widespread drought or degradation here after this last hot week.”

And hot it has been, just brutally so. If I were to step out into the sunlight, it was just beating on me, and immediately I would start to sweat. And that’s all heat index, right?

“That’s right. And I’ve got a great experience on my own with that. On Saturday afternoon, it was 94, 95 degrees at my house. We had just one short lived rain shower. It made it super muggy, but the temperature never dropped below about 90. So stepping outside and that you’re right, Mike, it just hits you like a ton of bricks. But you know, looking at the air temperatures, of course, those have been hot. Charlotte just had three days in a row with highs over 100 degrees. It was the first time they’d seen heat that long, lasting in more than a decade, since June of 2015 but you’re right when you factor in that moisture, the humidity, it made it feel even hotter than that. Back on Sunday last weekend, we were seeing heat index values over 100 degrees across the Carolinas, and then when you got down toward the coast, over 110 in some cases, upwards of 120-degree heat index values. So certainly, anybody outdoors in those conditions was just feeling that misery, that discomfort, and of course, a lot of those high heated that index values stem from the rain that we had earlier in the month. All that moisture has stuck around on the ground and in the air, and that’s just made it even easier to get that that muggy weather in those uncomfortable days.”

But we flip the calendar to August, and poof, things changed. What’s happening?

“Yeah, I would say this is a huge change. And again, Mother Nature has a way of knowing when that month is changing, and it sometimes flips the script from the end of one month to the beginning of the next. We’re watching a cold front coming across the Carolinas today. It’ll mostly make it across the state by this afternoon, but then it’s going to decide to spend a weekend at the beach, and it’s going to hang around right along the coastline, especially through Saturday. Most areas can expect to see at least half an inch to an inch of rain by Saturday afternoon, but those coastal areas may see several inches of rain lasting on through the day on Sunday. But the better news, Mike, is once that front leaves and once that rain finally lets up, we are in for some beautiful weather over the next week. High temperatures, mostly low to mid 80s, even seeing some nighttime lows down in the mid-60s, certainly a big change from where we’ve been over the last week.”

And I don’t think anybody is going to complain about getting a break from that summer heat.

“Absolutely not. That’s amazing that here we go into the beginning of August, typically one of the hottest months of the year, and we’re going to get some relief like this. Yeah, nobody’s going to be complaining about that.”

Do you think that the rain that’s coming in with this system is that going to affect positively those dry areas?

“Well, it should at least make the farmers in those areas pretty happy, because they are needing just a little bit of rain to top off some of those soil moisture reserves. With that said, Mike, you know, the crops are still in pretty good shape. We’ve talked in recent weeks about the cotton and the progress that it’s made. It’s still tracking really nicely compared to the five-year averages. The cotton progress is also still mostly in good shape. Some of the crops that have seen more of a hit from this recent dry weather are the pastures. Some of the soybeans also need a little bit more moisture, so especially for some of those Eastern soybean farms, I think they should be in pretty good shape after the rain they’ll get over the next few days.”