August heats up Atlanta

By RHONDA COOK

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Temperatures are going to get well into the 90s Saturday and the air quality is bad enough to earn a code orange alert.

Still, for August, this is normal, the National Weather Service said Saturday.

But, compared to July, it feels like the metro area is experiencing an extraordinary heat wave.

“Temperatures have increased,” said forecaster Laura Griffith.

Yet, she added, “We’re seeing more of what we generally see in the summer time. We saw this a lot last year when we were in a drought and we had little rainfall.”

Out of the 31 days in July, the weather service recorded readings of 90 degrees on only five of them, and only three more of those days went over 90. Last year there were 13 days that were 90 degrees or higher in July.

At the same time, just eight days into August, four days have already topped 90 and Saturday and Sunday are expected to join that list with readings of 93 degrees, Griffith said.

In Middle and South Georgia it will be even hotter; Macon’s high will be in the mid 90s and Albany’s should be 97.

The normal high for Aug. 7 is 89 degrees. Friday it was 91.

“Relatively speaking, when were talking two to three degrees from normal, that’s not much of anomaly,” Griffith said.

The record for Aug. 7 is 101, set in 1980 when the state was experiencing a lengthy heat wave.

“It could be worse,” Griffith said.

The record low for Aug. 7 is 60 degrees. Friday’s low was 72, which is also expected to be Saturday’s.

“So it could be much nicer,” Griffith said

As usually comes with high temperature readings in metro Atlanta, officials have set the air quality alert at Code Orange. That means the elderly, young children and people with respiratory problems are warned against going outside and the otherwise healthy are cautioned about exercising outdoors.

No rain is expected until Monday when there should be the usual “summer time convection when we have thunderstorms in the afternoon,” Griffith said,

Afternoon rains are expected all week and highs should return to the 80s by Thursday.