At a Glance
- Meteorological summer wraps up on Saturday.
- Some places have taken it on the chin repeatedly this summer.
- But a few cities haven't either sweltered in heat or been too stormy this summer.
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Saturday wraps up summer 2024, and while some locations in the U.S. have seen relatively little excessive heat or thunderstorms, others have been much less fortunate.
Meteorologists group the seasons into clean three-month buckets based on annual temperatures, not strictly on the tilted Earth's path around the sun. Meteorological summer runs from June through August.
We took a look back at the nation's weather to come up with the three best and worst weather cities in summer 2024.
Worst Weather Cities of Summer 2024
3. Boise, Idaho
Boise sweltered through its second-hottest summer in records dating to before Idaho's statehood, behind only 2021. It tied for its second-most days with triple-digit heat (20) and had its second-hottest daily low temperature of 82 degrees on July 22. That's a low typical of the Gulf Coast in summer, not a semi-arid Great Basin city at 2,700 feet elevation.
But it wasn't just the heat.
A rash of wildfires in the Great Basin and interior Northwest, both in Idaho and adjacent states, pumped plumes of smoke over Idaho's Treasure Valley. According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Boise metro area had at least "unhealthy" air quality 17 days from July into August. At times, it reached very unhealthy levels, and was among the nation's worst air quality.
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2. St. Johnsbury, Vermont
In July 2023, Vermont and other parts of the Northeast were swamped by massive flooding that claimed 10 lives and cost an estimated $2.2 billion damage. This past July, the Green Mountain State was hit by two destructive floods.
From July 10-11, up to 6 inches of rain from the remnants of Hurricane Beryl washed away roads and inundated homes and businesses in upstate New York and northern Vermont, claiming two lives.
Just 19 days later, a small area of torrential rain overnight from July 29-30 destroyed homes and washed out roads in Vermont's "Northeast Kingdom".
St. Johnsbury, Vermont, hit by both events, had two of its four wettest days on record dating to 1894 and topped its previous record wettest month by over 6 inches.
If that wasn't enough, they also had their hottest summer in their 131-year record book.
1. Ruidoso, New Mexico
As impactful as the twin Vermont floods were, nowhere in the U.S. endured nearly the parade of events as one New Mexico town.
It began the day after Father's Day when two large wildfires flared up near Ruidoso. One of those, the South Fork fire, prompted an evacuation of this town in the Sierra Blanca Mountains about 135 miles south-southeast of Albuquerque. The fires charred more than 1,500 structures and 500 homes, the Albuquerque Journal reported, and claimed two lives.
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That was only the opening chapter of this saga. New Mexico's monsoon season then kicked into gear, with nearly daily thunderstorm downpours running off ground singed by the fires, triggering muddy, debris-strewn flows into Ruidoso and neighboring towns.
The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings for these debris flows in Ruidoso an incredible 25 separate days from June 19 through August 29. On eight of those days, flooding was serious enough to prompt the NWS to upgrade to a rarely-issued flash flood emergency for the town.
Imagine fearing an isolated, slow-moving summer thunderstorm for weeks after a wildfire chased you from your home.
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Other rough summer 2024 weather
- Chicago: While summer's heat wasn't extreme, the July 15 derecho not only knocked out power to hundreds of thousands, but also spawned 32 tornadoes in northeast Illinois and northwest Indiana, the most on record for any day in the forecast area covered by the NWS-Chicago office.
- Houston: Hurricane Beryl triggered massive power outages lasting for days during what was a top 10 hottest summer.
- Oxford, Connecticut: This part of southwest Connecticut measured up to 14.83 inches of rain on August 18 in what may have been the state's heaviest 24-hour rainfall on record, topping rain from 1955's Hurricane Diane. The destructive flash flooding claimed at least two lives.
- Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands: Ernesto flooded roads and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands. It was also San Juan's hottest summer on record.
- South Carolina: Up to 22 inches of rain from Debby flooded parts of the Palmetto State for weeks after.
Best Weather Cities of Summer 2024
It wasn't all gloom and doom. Let's end on a happier note and highlight a couple of cities where summer's heat was relatively under control and weather was more delightful than usual.
Seattle
Except for a sizzling early July, summer wasn't persistently hot in Seattle. Both June and August were cooler than average.
And while wildfires were a frequent problem in the interior Northwest, Seattle didn't see much wildfire smoke, according to EPA data.
Kansas City
Known for scorching summers, Kansas City had both a cooler-than-average July and August.
Eight August days had high temperatures only in the 70s. Four of those August days had morning lows in the 50s, no doubt prompting some to reach for a light jacket, not top of mind in summer.
This generally cooler weather also kept the usual rash of summer severe thunderstorms and heavy rain relatively at bay.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.
