The world's hottest rain fell in California on July 24 at a temperature of 119 degrees, setting a new record, but one National Weather Service expert is saying not so fast, according to the blog Weather Underground on Thursday.
The Weather Underground pointed to figures produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that recorded conditions at the Imperial County Airport that day. Rain was observed for four consecutive hours beginning at 3:53 p.m., Pacific Time, with a temperature of 119 degrees during the first two hours of the event.
The blog reported that the heated rain in Imperial, located in Southern California, was caused by a flow of moisture coming from the southeast caused by a southwest U.S. monsoon, a seasonal influx of moisture created due to the difference in temperature between the hot desert and the cooler ocean areas surrounding Mexico to the south.
The Weather Underground said the air on July 24 flowed from the Gulf of California, where water temperatures hovered around 88 degrees, about five degrees higher than normal. The blog said that the evaporation from that water provided more moisture than is usually available to the atmosphere over the desert southwest.
"Most of the rain evaporated since the humidity was only 11-15 percent during the rain event, and only a trace of precipitation was recorded in the rain gauge," the blog said. "Nevertheless, the July 24 rain at 119 degrees in Imperial sets a new record for the hottest rain in world history."
The previous record for the world's hottest rain was set in Needles, California in 2012 with a temperature of 115 degrees, the Weather Underground reported then.
Jeff Berardelli, a weather expert and contributor to CBS News, suggested on Twitter than the new record was more evidence of Earth's changing climate.
Paul Iniguez, of the Phoenix National Weather Service office, threw cold water on the hot rain record Saturday, saying that he does not think the July 24 rain was actually a record based on further research, probably because of faulty detection sensors.
"The present weather sensor is what measures the presence of rain, when only a trace of rain is reported, and it is possible for this sensor to get fooled," the Weather Underground wrote. "In particular, there was not significant cloud cover apparent on satellite imagery during the first hour that rain was reported at Imperial, though clouds did move in after that. In light of Paul's analysis, we have to regard the world-record hottest rainfall event at Imperial, California as questionable."
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