NewsChannel 5.com - Nashville, Tennessee - Nashville Hit With Record Heat, Drought

Nashville Hit With Record Heat, Drought

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - It's been a long hot summer in Middle Tennessee with record-shattering high temperatures, scorched ground and almost no rainfall.

Thursday marked the 14th day in August that Nashville reached 100 degrees or higher. Never before has the region been this hot for this long.

This year will likely go down in the history books as one of the driest years on record, according to NewsChannel 5 meteorologist Kelly Cox.

Most of Middle Tennessee has severe to exceptional drought conditions. It is also shaping up to be the hottest August ever.

The heat and the dry weather have actually acted to compound each other, Cox said.

"In a normal year we'd get fairly regular rainfall giving us a reserve of ground moisture," Cox said. "On hot days that moisture evaporates, supplying the atmosphere with water vapor that helps produce rain showers and also moderates the air temperature - keeping 100 degree heat in check."

Before the heat wave, the soil was already dry. As temperatures climbed in August, the ground became drier.

Moisture, necessary to moderate temperatures or form showers, isn't available in dry ground.

"So the hotter it gets, the dryer it gets, and the drier it gets the hotter it gets," Cox said.

She said a large, powerful weather system such as a hurricane could end the cycle. She said dying tropical systems bring rain as was the case in 2005 when remnants of Hurricane Katrina brought more than 2.5 inches of tropical rain to Nashville.

These systems may produce drought-quenching rainfall, but they are rare.

The only tropical system that gave more than 4 inches of rain in a day was Hurricane Frederick in 1979.   The category 3 hurricane made landfall at Dauphin Island in Alabama before turning north, bringing almost 7 inches of rain to Nashville. This was the largest single-day rainfall. It also marked the only time a tropical system delivered more than 4 inches of rain in a single day.

After Frederic, the second wettest tropical system for Middle Tennessee was an unnamed storm in June of 1934. The storm brought 3.12 inches of rain to Nashville.  That is followed by Hurricane Isador which gave 2.9 inches of rain in September 2002.