West Allis? More like Hot Allis!
Ha, that was a good and smart joke, and you enjoyed reading it. A recent study pulled together weather data to declare a “hottest city” in every state, and our beloved Wisconsin was left with West Allis as the winner.
When I first heard this result, I swore viciously and leapt up from my seat. “That can’t possibly be right!”
“No, no, no, little fool,” my editor said. “They mean hottest temperature-wise. Not, like, which city is the most poppin’”
That made a lot more sense.
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With 16 days per year with a temperature above 90 degrees, an average summer maximum temperature of 82.4 degree and an average summer minimum of 61, West Allis beat the rest of our cold, cold state for that top spot. This makes some sense – none of the Lake Effect from the shore, pretty far south. The study only analyzed cities with a population of 10,000 or higher, so it’s certainly possible that there is a hotter little town somewhere around here.
An air conditioning filter company put the study together, so we checked out the methodology, and it’s simple enough. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Centers for Environmental Information put together a Climate Normals data set, which listed three-decade averages for temperature. The cities were ranked by the average number of days per year when the temperature topped 90 degrees.
By this methodology, the hottest city in the country was Yuma Arizona, to which one can catch the 3:10. Yuma had 185 days over 90 degrees, which makes Stallis’ paltry 16 look absurd.
So that was interesting enough. Now, what we really want is a scientific study of what’s most poppin’ round these parts.
