Hawaii’s wild summer of broken high-temperature records - Honolulu has set 29 record highs

Tying or breaking a record high temperature is impressive. Doing it several days in a row? Even more notable. But to do it 20 days in a row? That’s unheard of.

But not this year in Hawaii. The Aloha State just wrapped up probably its warmest summer ever, obliterating records left and right and over and over again. It’s yet another location feeling the heat in an ever-warming world.

Honolulu has seen 45 days with record highs so far this year, including 29 days between June and August. That’s the equivalent of more than two record highs every week. Beginning Aug. 10, Honolulu hit 90 degrees each of the next 37 days.

But even more impressive have been the nighttime lows. From 1950 to 2018, only 14 nights failed to drop below 80 degrees. This year has featured 19 such nights. The combination of toasty daytime highs and even steamier nighttime lows has helped 2019 claim the top spot for having the hottest calendar day on record in Honolulu — and snag second and third place in the process, while tying twice for fourth.

Honolulu also hit 95 degrees on the final day of August. That set a record for the hottest August temperature recorded in more than a century of bookkeeping, as well as tied the record for hottest year-round temperature.

All told, Honolulu recorded its hottest summer in the books, coming in 0.3 degrees warmer than 2005, the previous record holder.

It’s not just a phenomenon local to Honolulu. In fact, of the four long-running climate sites spread along the Hawaiian archipelago, three of them saw their warmest summer on record.

It’s no coincidence that Hawaii’s seeing a flurry of record-high temperatures. As climate change causes warming, the pendulum will continue to swing toward record highs outpacing record lows at an exponentially accelerating clip. All the while, the background temperature continues to sneak upward, Honolulu having warmed about 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950.

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