Dear Friends,

We sit in the interim between the hottest summer in recorded New Orleans history and Front Day and all the joy and festivities that follow it. The light is not so long in the evenings and there are, even here, hints that summer’s grip on the land has loosened. While we have yet to taste the crispness of Autumn, in the wee morning hours, the wind whispers to our skin that it is not far. Let us take a look back while we also look forward.

This summer was exceptionally hot for New Orleans and dry for the region and the areas that drain the Mississippi, leading to our current saltwater issue. This summer crushed records and made the summers of 1980 and 2016 seem not so bad. We reached the previous all-time high of 102 three times this summer. We also hit 105 on August 27, the hottest day in our recorded history. We also tied our previous highest average temperature that day, with a 92.5 average (105/80), which was last set on July 16, 1932 (100/85).

In addition to the all-time highest recorded temperature and the highest average temperature, we also set the record for the hottest week and month on record in New Orleans history. From August 21-27, the average temperature was 90.1 degrees. The average high for August 2023 was a remarkable 98.2. The average low for August 2023 was 79.9. The average temperature for August was 89.1!

It may not be a big deal in other Southern regions, which are not surrounded by tempering waters, but New Orleans reached 100 degrees 17 times this year. The previous record for most days at 100 or higher in a single year was just 7 in 1924. To put that record into perspective, from 2012-2022, only one day reached 100. Consider that from 1893-2022, New Orleans had only 37 recorded days at 100 or higher. In other words, nearly 1/3 of 100 degree days in New Orleans in the last 131 years occurred in the last four months.

We reached the old New Orleans benchmark for oppressive heat, 95 degrees, on 56 days this summer, which ties us for most in history with 1980. The third most 95 degrees days is 54 in 1911. We failed to reach 90 degrees as a high only 6 times this year from June through September, which smashed the old record of 14 sub-90 days in 1980. Other notable summers with highs below 90 include 1911 (16), 1932 (49), 2016 (17), 2017 (63), 2018 (30), 2019 (22), 2020 (40), 2021 (53), and 2022 (45).

We threatened 2016’s record of most nights at 80 or above. 2016 hit what was then thought of as an unbreakable record of 43 such nights. Though we drew close, 2023 ended with the second most, with 36 nights with lows 80 or above, including 4 nights that did not drop below 83, the second warmest night on record (the warmest low of all time is 85 on July 16, 1932). On September 19 and 20, we dipped below 70 for the first time in four months, so we ended the summer with two nights below 70.

2023 goes down as the hottest summer in our written history, which is not in itself unusually exceptional. What is, though, is how much hotter 2023 was than every other summer in our recorded history. I sure am glad it is now over.

Now, let us look to the good, Front Day, coming our way! Mother claims to have invented Front Day in 1998, but Grandmother disputes it. Grandmother says that her grandmother came up with the idea in 1911 after that brutally hot summer, which was the standard for hot New Orleans summers for 69 years until 1980 reared its sun on us. Grandmother tells the story like this:

“My Grandmother, your Great, Great Grandmother was the first known New Orleanian to celebrate Front Day. Your Mother heard my bedtime stories about Front Day as a little girl, and she has done well to revive and cultivate the holiday. But she was acting on an idea my Grandmother created.

“Grandmother talked about the heat during the summer of 1911. She was part of a volunteer women’s auxiliary from Christ Cathedral and First Presbyterian Churches tasked with decorating the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art in City Park. This is the museum that later became NOMA, which I know you so love visiting. It opened during the Advent season, I believe December 15.

“Anyway, Grandmother talked about how that summer was unrelenting. Three times each week, she took the St. Charles and Canal St. streetcars before fetching a horse drawn carriage from Canal St. to City Park. She talked about how hot working in the stone building was.

“September of 1911 was hotter than any month she had ever felt, and this was in a time when Septembers were usually closer to what we think of as October or even early November weather.

“When the morning of October 18, 1911 broke, my Grandmother was up with the sun. She recalled until her last days how it was one of the most beautiful days of her life. The sunrise was perfect and a light northerly wind brushed her face with temperatures in the low 50s reminding her of the goodness of creation. She felt so wonderful that she left early that morning and walked the entire distance to the museum, which was a five mile jaunt.

“Once the women were finished with their duties that afternoon, my Grandmother invited them all back to her Prytania home. There she had a lovely spread which included hot chocolate from Switzerland she purchased from the Katz & Bestoff on Canal, which became the future site of the failed Hard Rock Hotel. Thomas, the church organist, was summoned, and quickly arrived to play their custom home organ. I can still picture her indelible, childlike smile when she reminisced about singing those hymns and drinking chocolate on that first Front Day.

“She and her friends gathered for years on each first sunny day of Autumn with highs below 80 and lows below 60. Unlike your mother, the original Front Days did not have to be on Saturday. I wish your mother would change that requirement.”