Laurens warming to the max

For more than a quarter century, we have had scientist after scientist warning of impending doom from rising ocean temperatures on Earth.  Most of these scientists were not alive in 1954. They surely were not living in Laurens County in the summer of 1954.  Now that summer has ended once again, let us look back seventy years to that brutally hot and bone-dry summer.

We all know how hot it gets in the summertime.  Many times we feel like the temperature is in excess of one hundred degrees. The relative humidity of the South causes the air to feel hotter than it actually is.   In the last 60 years, statistics have shown that the official temperature in Dublin has exceeded one hundred degrees only 386 times or an average of only six and a half times per year. 

Of those 386 times, 111 or nearly 30 percent came in the years of 1954, 1977, 1980, and 1981.   Amazingly during the years of 1940, 1947, 1949, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1967, 1973, 1989, 1991, 1992, and 1994 the official temperature never made it to the century mark.  

The longest streak without a 100-degree day began on August 31, 1990 and ended on July 10, 1993, for a total of one thousand forty-five days – or nearly three years.  During a four year period from June 23, 1964 to July 1, 1968, the temperature reached one hundred degrees only once, on July 13, 1966.

Despite the arguments that the Earth’s temperature is rising due to global warming, one hundred-degree-plus temperatures by decade have no definite pattern.  During the 1940s, temperatures reached one hundred or more degrees on thirty days.  The highest temperature of the decade occurred on June 18, 1944, and on August 30, 1948, when the thermometer read 104 degrees. 

During the 1950s, the second hottest of the last six decades, temperatures reached one hundred or more degrees on 110 days.  This past summer there were only four days when the official temperature rose to 100 degrees, all four being 100 to 102 degrees. 

The hottest year of the last 70 years was 1954.  Meteorologically, a five-year drought began in 1952 and lasted until 1957. 

Five-year droughts are not rare, in almost every decade in the 125 years, there have been multi-year droughts when actual rainfall would be much lower than normal.  As it turns out, Laurens County has one of the lowest levels of rainfall, averaging about 46 inches each year. 

During the summer of that year, the temperature exceeded one hundred degrees on thirty-eight days.    Sixteen times the temperature reached an even one hundred degrees.  For 17 consecutive days from June 22nd to July 8th, the temperature climbed to one hundred degrees or above – an all-time recorded temperature record.   

The streak started out with a cool morning low of 62 degrees on June 22nd.   During the next seventeen days,  the mean temperature was 87 degrees.  The mercury reached 101 degrees on four days, 102 degrees on six days, 103 degrees on three days, 104 degrees on five days, 105 degrees on one day, 106 degrees on one day, 107 degrees on one day, and 108 degrees on one day.  

The hottest day of that year and the second hottest ever recorded was June 28, 1954, when the temperature rose to 108 degrees.  It was the hottest day ever recorded in June.  The third highest temperature of 107 degrees was set the day before on June 27th.   The 22nd of August was the hottest day ever in August when the temperature was measured at 106 degrees.  The temperature went up to 104 degrees in August but only tied a record set in numerous years.  

The all-time record high temperature for October of 101 degrees was set on October 5th.    During that heat wave, the rain gauge collected eight and one-quarter inches of rain, which added to the misery of Laurens Countians. Residents were finally given a break when the temperature failed to reach one hundred degrees during all of 1955 and not again until August 6, 1956.  

The wrath of the heat had more important consequences than heavy sweating and heat stroke.  Georgia Agricultural Commissioner, Thomas Linder, a native of Laurens County, stated that the drought combined with the heat was the worst ever that he saw.  Interestingly the cotton crop is not as severely damaged by heat and drought as other agricultural products.  Linder forecasted that Georgia farmers were going to suffer an unprecedented loss, perhaps the largest to that date.

As usual, Federal aid was slow to come.  Georgia governor Herman Talmadge pleaded to the President on a weekly basis.  I am not saying that it was political, but Georgia was a heavily Democratic state and Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president.  After several months the promised aid began to trickle in from Washington, in many cases it was a small amount and a lot late.

Laurens and thirty-one other Georgia counties reported that they had less than a 30-day supply of hay to feed their livestock.  The Farmers Home Administration reported that pasture conditions were five percent of normal and corn production was ten percent of normal.  Working conditions for farmers and everyone else were incredibly bad. 

By autumn, game hunters were finding a lot less game to kill and fish to catch to feed their families.  

Now the summer of 1954 did not feature the hottest temperature ever recorded in Laurens County. That honor goes to the year 1980, on July 14, and in 2007, on August 11, when the official temperature topped off at 109 degrees.

The combination of eight inches of rain between May 31 and October 31 contributed to the worst recorded summer in Laurens County’s history. 

Only in the year 1925 was the drought and heat as horrendous. That year, 99 years ago was filled with extremely hot temperatures, extremely low temperatures, searing droughts, and torrential rains. 

 It was a year that those who lived through it will never forget and a year that we must remember, for as we all know, weather patterns go through cycles.