The 97 degree temperature Sunday afternoon broke the daily record high by 12 degrees. It also broke the October record high by four degrees and is the warmest temperature on record for so late in the year. Such a remarkable statistic requires an extraordinary circumstance.
It is noteworthy that there was no place around even close to 97 degrees the day before. Much of that heat was caused by the dynamics of the atmosphere Sunday afternoon. At 1 pm, the temperature had warmed to 81 degrees with a dew point of 47 and the day was on track to produce a record high around 87 as expected.
Then, high pressure in the upper atmosphere created a surge of downward moving air just ahead of a cold front. As this air sunk, the increasing weight of the air above (air pressure) caused it to warm up and dry out. At 4 pm Sunday, the temperature was to 97 degrees with a dew point of 36 which created a relative humidity of 12 percent; desert air at its finest.
