It’s officially summer and forecasters predict warmer than normal months ahead

Average June temp in La Crosse already 7 degrees above normal.

Summer officially began at 11:24 p.m. Tuesday night.

The National Weather Service is predicting temperatures above normal in La Crosse for the months of July, August and September.  

Ironically, this week has been cool compared with the first half of June. Sunday marked the first time this month that La Crosse had a daytime high below 80 degrees.

On average, La Crosse gets 17 days of 90-plus temperatures per year but we’ve already had seven such days this month – more than La Crosse got for the entire year of 2014.

The highest temp so far was 97 on June 3, and the average temperature for this month is 7 degrees above normal.

As for those yearly predictions from the NWS: There’s a 39 percent chance of warmer-than-normal conditions, apparently. And it doesn’t stop there.

The forecasters think the chance of warmer temps will be 40 percent or more from August through, at least, January.

Chances of below normal temperatures are no better than 33 percent over the next 12 months.

What that means is the experts think we’ll have an average daily temperature of 70 or higher through September.