By Scott Harvey
– Despite Tuesday's cloud cover, North Texas again topped the 100-degree mark and the excessive heat continues to approach historic levels, now more than halfway toward the 1980 mark for most consecutive triple digit days.
Mark Fox with the National Weather Service Office in Forth Worth said Tuesday was the best day this week to break the streak.
"If we get the cloud cover to stick around just a little bit longer but I think there's going to be enough breaks in the clouds that it's going to allow the streak to continue."
And Fox was right. The temperature at Dallas Love Field read as high as 102-degrees Tuesday afternoon.
Fox says this year's heat pattern follows the same pattern that set the record in 1980, mainly due to what meteorologists classify as the weather pattern La Nina. The phenomenon contrasts from an El Nino year, where rains usually falls in the spring and lasts through the early summer.
"In a La Nina year, it's exactly the opposite," Fox explained. "There are very cold temperatures off to the west of us. That means less moisture to come our way. And that means when the high pressure area starts to set up for a normal Texas summer, we haven't had the wetting rains in the spring and it just kind of feeds upon itself; hot temperature after hot temperature after hot temperature. And it usually lasts until we start getting those cold fronts in the early part of September."
Fox thinks it is possible we break the record for most consecutive 100-degree days. He encourages everyone to stay hydrated, and to never leave a child or pet in a hot car or other location by themselves.