Sacramento temperature blanket 2024: We’re finally exiting California’s hottest summer on record — but the heat isn’t over yet

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With summer ending last weekend, it is officially autumn. I’m looking forward to the soup-making and sweater-wearing season, but we’re not exactly out of the heat yet. This week, we’ve seen high temperatures in the high 90s. 

But summer’s end does mean we can take a look back and assess the season’s record-breaking peak temperatures. It’s been a lot to document in our temperature blanket; Claire and I have accumulated enough crocheted data that we’ve had to actually start stitching our blanket together in order to keep our squares organized. 

And now that it’s stitched together, we can take a look at the big picture: Most weeks in June and July were represented by our maize yellow (which means weekly average temperatures in the 80s) and tangerine orange yarn (which means weekly average temperatures in the 90s). Temperatures cooled in August to weekly averages in the 70s, represented by our celery green color. 

That cooling persisted into this month. So far, we’ve seen a couple “celery” weeks and one seafoam-colored week, which means an average weekly temperature in the 60s. Nothing too surprising there; for meteorologists, “summer” typically means the period between June 1 and August 31, since those months typically encapsulate the warmest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. We’re now (finally) moving out of that. 

A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association found 2024’s summer was California’s hottest on record. Other states, including Arizona and Florida, also broke the record for their hottest summers this year. And while not every state saw record-breaking heat, NOAA reports the summer was, overall, the fourth hottest on record for the entire United States. With climate change, scientists say we’ll see this trend continue into the future as hot periods become longer in duration and more intense. 

We saw those records break locally as well. Sacramento experienced its hottest 20-day stretch on record the city from June into July. We can see the impact of the heat in our temperature blanket, where you’ll find two “tangerine” colored squares representing the first two weeks of July.  

Eric Kurth is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. He says July was a particularly hot month for inland Northern California. 

“In terms of Sacramento, downtown Sacramento had the hottest July on record as well as Stockton and Modesto and Fairfield,” Kurth said.

While temperatures dipped earlier in the month of September, we’re still seeing some days peaking in the 90s ahead. With that comes the potential for increased fire risk. 

“We certainly are still in fire season,” said Kurth. “As we get some of this warmer and drier weather … that's something that we will be watching closely.”

He says the season for heightened fire risk usually ends in late October or November with the help of a “season-ending event,” which usually means a big storm that brings a lot of precipitation. In the meantime, he says meteorologists at the Sacramento weather service office will be monitoring conditions as we enter into this final stretch.