This is a question I am asked a lot as summer approaches. My answer usually is when did we not see a hot summer. There is a joke that goes as follows: What separates Columbia from hell in the summertime? Answer: A screen door.

Let’s face it; it is hot and humid in the summertime. Part of it is geography. There is a hot zone that extends about a hundred fifty miles wide from Shreveport, LA, to Jackson, MS, to Montgomery, AL, to Macon, GA, to Columbia, SC, to Raleigh, NC. This area does not get the benefit of sea breezes or the cooling effects from the mountains.

Each month the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) issues seasonal forecasts up to 13 months out. These are serious attempts to provide meaningful outlooks for the months up to a year in advance. There are times when trends can be determined and thus a useful outlook can be made.

However, there are serious limitations. How much hotter or colder is difficult to forecast. The best that can be said is whether it will be warmer or cooler than normal. Precipitation is even harder to predict and the usefulness of the outlook seems to favor droughts than wet periods.

This year the forecast will be to the liking of many. The CPC is forecasting cooler than normal temperatures for Iowa southeastward into the western Carolinas and northern Florida. Temperatures are expected to be hotter than normal for the western third of the country and the Northeast. Normally we would expect wet conditions to accompany the cooler than normal temperatures. However, the precipitation forecast calls for wetter conditions along the eastern half of the Gulf coast region and Florida. It could also be wet in the Northeast, but dry for the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies.

The outlook does not rule out hot, humid conditions. It is simply a guess that average temperatures will be cooler than normal with near normal conditions for the remainder of the Carolinas. What I get from the discussion from CPC is that it will be a hot, humid summer. We will probably get near normal rainfall from afternoon thunderstorms. The humidity will be high and there may be few hundred-degree days. This may good news for an area undergoing drought conditions and with memories of last year’s heat wave.