Dear Friends,

Great Grandmother, the Platonist Catholic, was a brilliant philosopher and could recite the Catholic Catechism from front to cover while giving occasional references to Thomas’s Summa. My memories of her are opacified through the lens of decades of separation from her, but I remember she believed in the immortality of the soul, unChristian as such a belief might actually be.

She was a positivist, always encouraging. On days in elementary school after being teased by classmates, I might come home with a sullen expression on my face or a moue. She would bake me chocolate chip cookies and say to me, “You learn much more about a person and a place by how low they get than by how high.”

Great Grandmother’s vast wisdom applies to so many facets of life, but only recently did I realize her philosophy is applicable also to climatology. She grew up in the Garden District in the early 1900s. Even in her last days in the early 90s, she stood defiantly against both heating and air conditioning, insisting that both were for modernist “sissies” and milksops softened by materialism, comfort, and waste. I think her lectures on the subject are why I do not use heat in the winter (a Pendleton Glacier Park wool blanket is more than sufficient) nor shift the thermostat below 85 in the summer.

Of course, her old house was built for life in New Orleans before air conditioning. It had twelve foot ceilings and beautiful floor to ceiling windows that moved on a pulley system. All this time I assumed she was hardy and rugged, and she was, but until this past week, when I dove into the weather almanac, I did not consider another source for her aversion to controlling the temperature: it simply was not as hot in New Orleans in her days than ours.

Friends, what a brutally warm stretch of hot weather the last three weeks has been. Should there be any consolation for this unabating heat, it is knowing that you are living through a historic streak, building character. While the weaker of us hide in frigid A/C, those who are strong of body and spirit are using this heat as a testing and pruning ground. We are battling Satan’s temptation of comfort by focusing on God’s grace rather than man’s pleasure. Is there any doubt as to why Jesus went into the desert rather than an ice house to face forty days of Satan’s temptations?

I have spent much time in the home bathed in a lather of perspiration reading almanacs, going through Great Grandmother’s journals, some of which describe the weather, and collating all this information so that it may be of use and edification for you. There are many subjects about which I could write about the history of New Orleans temperatures, but the below are especially poignant and worthy of your attention.

TulaneLSU’s Hottest Days in New Orleans History

I use an average of a day’s high and a day’s low to arrive at the hottest days. It should be noted that in New Orleans’s recorded meteorologic history, there have been three different weather stations used, each run by the federal government. The first gauge was set up in Audubon Park and used as the station of record from 1893 to 1929. It still exists, though is no longer the station of record, and sits 7.5 miles south of the warm but tempering waters of Pontchartrain. From 1930 to 1947, the station of record moved downtown to the Weather Bureau Office at 600 Camp Street, eight miles south of the Lake. Then, in 1948 it moved to today’s Armstrong Airport west of the city and four miles south of the Lake.

1. 92.5

On July 16, 1932, in Great Grandmother’s journal she wrote, “The city is an inferno today. We attempted to sail at the Club, but not even a whisper of wind would grab the sail. The waters of Pontchartrain were especially clear. The sea wall, whose construction seems interminis, is nearing completion. We crabbed and swam on the eastern sections that are now open. Our hamper was filled with three dozen crabs that will make a fine dinner later. Mother brought home for me a sno-ball from Hansen’s. Nectar is my favorite flavor but she bought spearmint. The flavor repels me, but the cooling ice draws me back. The advertisements in the daily are suggesting ‘you deserve’ air conditioning in the house. If people really got what they deserved they would need much more than a little air to cool in the real Inferno.”

On this day, at the downtown weather office, surrounded by the city’s concrete, the thermometer hit 100 degrees. It never fell below 85. This extremely high low temperature catapults this day into the record books as the hottest day in history. Yes, on August 22, 1980, the Airport’s meter hit the highest temperature ever recorded at 102, but the average temperature that day is not even in the top ten for the city.

For those who would say this temperature is an error, I suggest they build a temperature map of the region. There seems to have been a heat ridge that worked its way from east to west over July 15 and 16. On the 15th, the peninsula was blazing with Orlando seeing 100/73 and Ocala 104/70, which in those years was remarkably hot. In the Florida Panhandle, Panama City saw 103/78, Marianna rose to 106/74, and Tallahassee was 104/78 before cooling to 94/76 the following day.

Throughout Mississippi and Louisiana records fell the following day, July 16, 1932, many of which still stand. Morgan City was 100/80, Natchitoches 103/76, Monroe 102/76, Lafayette 100/72, Baton Rouge 98/79, Donaldsonville 100/79, Alexandria 104/79, Poplarville 102/77, Hattiesburg 103/74, Biloxi 101/81, Houston 102/78, Beaumont 101/80, Mobile 99/81, and Montgomery 100/80. For many of these locations this same date holds the record of hottest day in their histories.

This hot day is buttressed by what remains a top 5 hottest week in New Orleans recorded history with an average temperature of 88.6 (July 10-16: 92/78, 93/78, 97/78, 97/81, 98/83, 98/83, 100/85).

Will we break this record in the coming week? It is possible! This Wednesday’s forecast calls for 103/81, which would be 92.0, missing it oh so closely. This Wednesday is also the going away party at Impastato’s for legendary singer, Roy Picou, who has spent the last four decades at that most special of Italian restaurants delighting crowds with his beautiful voice. The party is from 6-8 and reservations are strongly recommended. It will be a spectacular night and I hope to see many of you there. I will certainly be singing a few numbers on stage. The 103 would give the city a new all-time record high. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday all have a chance to break the record average of 92.5, with forecast averages of 91.0 each day.

This post was edited on 8/19/23 at 7:17 pm