Occasional ice and sleet storms do considerable damage to trees, power and telephone lines, as well as make travel very difficult. The summer months are consistently quite warm, with maximum temperatures exceeding 100 degrees about 6 days per year, exceeding 95 degrees about 32 days per year, and exceeding 90 degrees about 87 days per year. The highest temperature on record is 110 degrees F on August 18, 1909. Showers and thunderstorms at any one location in the area give about eight days in a month of measurable rainfall. The resulting point rainfall totals are usually less than one-half inch except on two or three days per month when heavier amounts are recorded.
Thunderstorms occur each month, but are most frequent in spring and summer months.
The showers and thunderstorms during the spring and autumn months are most often produced by squall lines and fronts, and are generally heavier than the air mass showers which occur in the summer months. Severe local storms, including hailstorms, tornadoes, and local windstorms have occurred over small areas in all seasons, but are most frequent during the spring months, with a secondary peak from November to early January. Large hail of a damaging nature is infrequent, although hail as large as grapefruit fell in March 1961, and baseball size hail fell in May 1974 and April of 1995. The average relative humidity is rather high in all seasons. These high humidity values may be experienced at any hour but occur mainly during the early morning hours, with two-thirds of the hours shortly before sunrise having relative humidity of 90 percent or higher.