By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
Climatologically speaking, this has been a drastic summer for Houlton.
According to Noelle Runyan, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Caribou, June was the wettest month of all time for Houlton with 11.51 inches of rain.
To emphasize, it wasn’t the wettest “June” of all time — it was the wettest month since the weather has been officially monitored in Houlton. (It was, however, the fourth wettest June for Caribou.)
Houlton’s record-breaking precipitation of 11.51 inches beat out the 10.30-inch record set in November of 1950, during the great post-Thanksgiving Appalachian storm.
July went in the extreme other direction for the Shiretown, as it was the driest July on record for Houlton; only .59 inches of rain fell.
In Caribou, it was the third driest July on record with only 1.73 inches of rain.
Mother Nature seems to keep changing her mind for Aroostook County this summer.
The highest temperature recorded this August in Caribou was 89 degrees, which occurred on Aug. 26 — just a day after the lowest temperature was recorded on the morning of Aug. 25, when the mercury dipped to a balmy 47 degrees.
Runyan explained that the average August temperature so far in Caribou is 68.7 degrees, which is 4.7 degrees above normal.
