Hottest temperatures ever in West Michigan

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The hottest week on record in West Michigan was July 1936. It was also the hottest week in the entire state of Michigan and the entire contiguous United States.

Above are the high and low temperatures in Grand Rapids for the 8-day period of July 7-14, 1936. The average high temperature was 102.1 degrees and the average low temperature was 75.5 degrees.

The two hottest days were July 12 and 13, with highs of 106° and 108°, respectively. Considering all high temperatures since records began in the 19th century, these are the two hottest days Grand Rapids has ever experienced. Third place goes to July 6, 2012, when the maximum temperature was 40 degrees Celsius.

Bill’s Blog: Incredible heatwave in July 2012

The Average The highest temperature for the whole of July 1936 was 91.1 degrees.

Here are the high and low temperatures for Kalamazoo for the eight days from July 7 to July 14, 1936. That’s eight days in a row with high temperatures over 100 degrees.

The hottest days were the 13th and 14th with highs of 109° and 108°. The average high temperature in Kalamazoo on those eight days was 104.3 degrees.

Here are the highest temperatures in West Michigan reached during the July 1936 heat wave:

Newaygo topped the list at 111 degrees. That’s 21 degrees above 90 degrees, so you can imagine how that felt. Hastings reached a high of 109 degrees, and even closer to Lake Michigan in Hart, the thermometer climbed to 104 degrees.

Other highs: 104 degrees in Mt. Pleasant, Charlotte had 106°, Greenville 108° and Gull Lake 108°.

The heat stretched from the Atlantic coast to the Midwest and from there west to the Rocky Mountains. The highest temperature in Michigan was a sweltering 45 degrees in Mio, which is in Oscoda County, about halfway between Houghton Lake and Alpena.

Other high temperatures in Michigan:

Collegeville, Indiana (not Purdue, but St. Joseph’s College, a smaller Catholic college on the north end of town. The town is very small — only 330 residents) reached 46 degrees, and Wisconsin Dells (known for “Ride the Ducks” and for many years the Tommy Bartlett Water Ski Show) climbed to 46 degrees.

In Lincoln, Nebraska, there were 13 days this summer with highs between 111 and 117 degrees. The hottest day was July 25, when the high was 117 degrees and the low was 90 degrees.

Two states recorded both their highest and lowest temperatures since 1936. In North Dakota, the lowest temperature ever recorded was -60 degrees in Parshall. Five months later, the temperature in Steeke, North Dakota, rose to 121 degrees. That’s a difference of 181 degrees.

Above is an image of an approaching dust storm. As these storms approach, winds can increase to 30 to 40 miles per hour and visibility drops to nearly zero.

If you’re looking for a year of extreme weather, choose 1936. That was when we had the worst heat wave ever recorded across the United States. The winter of 1935-36 was bitterly cold. In Grand Rapids, temperatures dropped below zero nine times in January and February of that year.

We had a two-day tornado outbreak in the Southeast that left 454 people dead and 2,500 injured. On these two days alone, there were 11 tornadoes with intensity levels F3 to F5. The worst affected areas were Gainnesville, Georgia, and Tupelo, Mississippi.

There was a Above-average number of tropical storms in the Atlantic (17) and three of these tropical storms hit the USA

So if you’re looking for a year with extreme weather in the United States, 1936 is probably at the top of the list.

The highest temperature in world history was a scorching 134 degrees (56.7 degrees) in Death Valley, California on July 10, 1913. That was 110 years ago.

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