It is the longest day, so it gets the most sunshine, why is it hotter latter in the summer when the days are getting shorter again???
In: 341
A good way of thinking about it is when we have our first hot day of the year and get out a paddling pool.
The tap water we fill with will be cool and need time to heat up in the sun at first, so (unless you fill with warm water) swimming on a long hot day, the water will still be pretty cool. Let’s say tap water is 5c.
The pool takes 4 hours to warm from 5c to a max of 15c on day one, that’s +2.5 degrees per hour.
However, the pool doesn’t cool all the way back down to 5c overnight, it **stores** some of that heat.
So the next day if the starting temperature is 10c, it will only need 2 hours of the same sun to heat it to the same 15c.
TLDR: The Earth is a giant radiator that can store lots of heat and release it slowly over time, this stored heat adds to the heat generated throughout the day by the sun and has an accumulative effect.
[this website](https://lincolnweather.unl.edu/data/Lincoln-hottest-day-each-year.asp) has 171 data points of the hottest day of the year in Lincoln Nebraska. Oddly enough, the average hottest day of the year is exactly the summer solstice July 21st. That’s weird that it’s exactly on to me. Especially considering a lot of comments providing very good explanations why it’s not. This was literally the first useful website I found when searching for “hottest day of the year.” We can’t extrapolate from this and say that is the average everywhere, but having such a complete history all in one place is an amazing piece of data to me.
Edit: whoops, June. Oh well, still interesting.
because it’s the first day of summer, not the middle day of summer?
From Google:
*It’s not the hottest day of the year because the Earth releases the energy it absorbs at various rates — but it never releases it instantly. The Earth will receive the most energy from the sun but will release that energy in late July or August, usually.*
It might help to separate the two things you are thinking about
Maximum heat gained in one day
Vs
Maximum temperature stored
Each day either adds to the stored heat or let’s more heat escape (cooling). The solstice is just the day we can add the most to the storage in one day. But we will add some tomorrow and the next day until we hit the max and then it begins to cool…
Note: this is a vast oversimplification but address the root concept.
In a word: water.
It takes time for bodies of water to heat up. It starts happening before the first day of summer but it continues well beyond the first day of summer. Once they warm up those bodies of water stay warm and along with wind keep the surrounding air warm.
As the days get shorter in the fall the bodies of water slowly cool off.
Wow, I posted this question hoping I might get an answer or two, and then got handed a crap day that wouldn’t let me sneak away from my work computer and check in. Imagine my surprise to see so many answers, and it is really great there were so many analogies.
Thanks everyone!
Every day, each part of the earth gains heat from the sun while the sun is up and and also constantly loses heat to space. As long as heat in > heat out for the day in your location, tomorrow will (on average) be hotter. This is true all throughout the summer in most places, both before and after the summer solstice. The solstice would just be the day when the earth tends to heat up the most. In reality, things like clouds, wind and elevation add a little bit more randomness to the temperature day to day and place to place, but that’s the general pattern.
It’s as much about the low you’re starting from as anything. The ground temperature is basically as low as you’re going to get to at night under a heat dome. Longer days lead to the ground warming up. Then the ground gets to its maximum in July when the sun is baking down all day in the still lengthy days. Fronts can push the warm air through but until the ground cools down the temps will still get very warm.
its pretty fucken hot where i am, it was in the 90s f today when typically we dont go above 75 too much or below 45 in the winter… not too many houses here have ac
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