It's hot outside. Too hot, in many places, to go outside and recreate unless an ocean or a lake is involved.
But you know it's peculiarly roasting when even the rain is hot, and if you were in Needles, Calif., on Monday you would not have been refreshed by a thunderstorm that rolled in.
Jeff Masters of Weather Underground reports that the temperature of that rain was 115 degrees, setting "a new world record for the hottest rain in world history."
Masters added: "I don't think many people were outside to experience the feeling of rain falling at 115°, but if they were, it must have been an uncomfortable, sauna-like experience!"
Fortunately, most of the precipitation evaporated before it hit the ground, thanks to 11% humidity.
Explains Masters: "It is exceedingly rare to get rain when the temperature rises above 100°F, since those kind of temperatures usually require a high pressure system with sinking air that discourages rainfall.
"Monday's rain in Needles was due to a flow of moisture coming from the south caused by the Southwest U.S. monsoon, a seasonal influx of moisture caused by the difference in temperature between the hot desert and the cooler ocean areas surrounding Mexico to the south."
Needles is on the western bank of the Colorado River in the Mojave Desert, in San Bernardino County, just across the bridge from Arizona and not far from Nevada.
The previous record for hottest rain was 109 degrees in Mecca, Saudia Arabia, on June 5, 2012; and in Marrakech, Morocco, on July 10, 2010.
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