Could El Paso See the Most 100 Degree Days Ever in 2020?

Lots can be said about 2020. Here's a quick list of things that have happened this year:

• Australian wild fires
• Kobe Bryant died
• We almost went to war with Iran
• Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are stepping away from the royal family
• President Trump got impeached
• The Democrats are rolling with Joe Biden for the 2020 presidential election
• George Floyd died at the hands of some police officers
• There has been all kinds of riots and protests across the country
• And of course, COVID-19 and everything it has affected. Which is everything.

One thing that might be sneaking under the radar is how hot it's been this summer. It feels like we've had more triple digit days than normal. So I thought I'd look into it and see when El Paso had the most triple digit days and if we're even close to that.

According to weather.gov:

• El Paso averaged 15.4 days of triple digit heat a year
• Since 1879, there hasn't been one year that El Paso hasn't had at least one day reach triple digits
• There have been more than a few years that only saw one triple digit day:
  • 1899
  • 1904
  • 1914
  • 1917
  • 1919
  • 1926
  • 1941
  • 1967

So what is the record for triple digits days in a year? From what I can see it appears to be 66 all the way back in 1884. But the weather.gov website doesn't even finish out the highs of 2018. So I had to track those down by going to wunderground.com. Here are the results from the past 3 years:

• 2018 - 34 days of 100+ degree heat
• 2019 - 41 days of 100+ degree heat
• 2020 - We have had 34 days of 100+ degree heat so far. And that's not including today, August 11th.

So it isn't likely we'll break the mark of 66 days of 100 plus degree heat, but we could easily top last year's mark of 41. Although the 41 is what I counted on the Wunderground site, but the weather.gov website has 2018 with 46. We could take that mark down too.