CLEVELAND, Ohio — Record or near-record cold swept much of the middle part of the nation in July -- with some records being broken from the 1860s -- but a late-month rally in Northeast Ohio left the area barely in the top 20 for coldest July on record.
Other areas -- from Cincinnati to Madison, Wis. -- broke cold records and even Ohio cities such as Akron, Toledo, Youngstown, Columbus and Dayton came close to their historic marks.
"We still haven't figured that one out yet," said meteorologist Mark Adams at the National Weather Service station at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. "Everyone around us was in the top five or 10 coldest months on record and we finished 18th, but we really don't know why exactly."
Cleveland's average temperature in July was 69.9 degrees -- still two full degrees below normal (71.9) for the month, but well off the chilly pace set by the summer of 1960 at 67.6 degrees.
But more than 1,100 daily record low temperatures were broken in July nationwide, according to figures at the National Climatic Data Center reported today by AccuWeather. An additional 1,200 stations tied records.
States in the Northeast and Midwest reported low temperatures that dropped down into the 50s and 40s in July -- with 36 degrees reported in Michigan.
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/08/coldest_july_on_record_through.html