July of 2023 has been a truly stunning month. South Florida has already seen 30 warm-temperature records and we’re not even halfway through the month.
Of those 30, a total of 17 have come from Marathon - six in the mornings and eleven straight in the afternoons. People have been asking why Marathon is always hotter, if their temperature is accurate and if we should throw out some of the records.
The truth is, Marathon’s afternoon high temperature on a sunny summer day runs hotter than the actual temperature. It is likely because the thermometer is placed in a vulnerable spot that may be more exposed and therefore hotter.
The National Weather Service knows this and so do we here at NBC6. And in the past, we’ve chosen to not show Marathon when we thought it was too inaccurate. But we feel all of the records in July are valid for so many different reasons including the fact that the nighttime records are almost identical in Marathon and Key West, ocean temps have been up near 100° and the afternoon records from just a year ago were shattered by three to four degrees over the last three days.
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Marathon is shattering its own records by several degrees. Since we can’t say for sure that 99° is actually 99°, we can’t say for sure that Marathon was South Florida’s hottest reading. But we can say that 99° was Marathon’s hottest reading on record.
In fact, 99° has happened three times, but only this year was the low also an all-time record at 86°. In other words, even if Marathon’s temperature is off by a few degrees, if we are comparing Marathon to itself, July 13th was the hottest day on record and that fact is not up for dispute.
