The coolest May in recent memory is coming to an end, but it isn’t the coolest May Phoenix has ever seen.
Bianca Hernandez of the National Weather Service said this was the coolest May in recent history, but the story gets complicated when looking at Phoenix’s overall history.
“So if we’re looking at the past 30 years, we’re actually in first place for coolest May," Hernandez said. "But if you look at in period of record, it’s actually not the same and we’re not even in the top 10.”
That record period dates to 1895. Hernandez said the urban heat effect shares a large portion of the blame for Phoenix’s high temperatures in the past 30 years.
Hernandez said that temperatures on average were much cooler when Phoenix’s population was smaller in the early 20th century, and that this month’s cooler weather was a return to the overall mean.
“That kinda makes sense why this would be the coolest May because it actually used to be cooler looking back then than it actually is now," Hernandez said. "So I think looking at the past 30 years since we have been warming up, it kinda makes sense that we would have one of the cooler, coolest, Mays.”
Hernandez said given the average increase in temperatures overall in recent decades, Phoenix was due for a cool May at some point.
