(Editor’s note: The following article is one in a series of articles in the Agronomy eUpdate that examines the historical climate observations in Kansas. The methods used to do this analysis are explained in the introductory article in this series, from eUpdate No. 571, May 20, 2016. – Steve Watson)
Top 10 hottest, coldest, driest, and wettest years in Kansas
We wrap up this series of articles in the Agronomy eUpdate on “Kansas Climate Basics” with a set of “Top 10” listings. Table 1 provides the top ten hottest, coldest, driest, and wettest years during the period of 1895 to 2015. The hottest year recorded during this period was 2012 and coldest year was 1912. Five of the ten hottest years occurred during the 1930s. Both the driest and wettest years occurred in 1950s. Perhaps surprisingly, only two of the driest years were during the Dust Bowl decades of the 1930s.
The temperature difference between hottest year and coldest year is about 5 degrees F (2.7 degrees C) in Kansas. Perhaps more significantly, the precipitation difference is 19 inches between the wettest and driest years. These significant swings of temperature and precipitation make Kansas’s crop and livestock productions relatively vulnerable to changes of increasing climate extreme events from short-term and/or longer-term perspectives, which requires that adaptive measures are taken for sustaining Kansas agricultural production.
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Table 1. Kansas Top 10 hottest, coldest, driest, and wettest years from 1895 to 2015 |
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|
Rank |
Hottest year |
Degrees F |
Rank |
Coldest year |
Degrees F |
|
1 |
2012 |
58.9 |
1 |
1912 |
52.3 |
|
2 |
1934 |
58.1 |
2 |
1951 |
52.5 |
|
3 |
1954 |
57.7 |
3 |
1993 |
52.6 |
|
4 |
2006 |
57.6 |
4 |
1924 |
52.6 |
|
5 |
1938 |
57.5 |
5 |
1917 |
52.7 |
|
6 |
1939 |
57.4 |
6 |
1979 |
52.8 |
|
7 |
1946 |
57.4 |
7 |
1903 |
52.9 |
|
8 |
1933 |
57.3 |
8 |
1895 |
52.9 |
|
9 |
1931 |
57.1 |
9 |
1929 |
52.9 |
|
10 |
1921 |
57.1 |
10 |
1985 |
53.0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rank |
Driest year |
Inches |
Rank |
Wettest year |
Inches |
|
1 |
1956 |
17.3 |
1 |
1951 |
43.7 |
|
2 |
1966 |
19.3 |
2 |
1973 |
42.7 |
|
3 |
2012 |
19.4 |
3 |
1915 |
41.3 |
|
4 |
1936 |
19.8 |
4 |
1993 |
41.1 |
|
5 |
1952 |
20.1 |
5 |
1961 |
38.1 |
|
6 |
1939 |
20.7 |
6 |
1941 |
37.5 |
|
7 |
1910 |
20.7 |
7 |
2007 |
36.6 |
|
8 |
1917 |
21.0 |
8 |
1944 |
36.4 |
|
9 |
1963 |
21.1 |
9 |
1985 |
35.9 |
|
10 |
1988 |
21.3 |
10 |
1992 |
35.8 |
Xiaomao Lin, State Climatologist, Department of Agronomy
xlin@ksu.edu
John Harrington Jr., Department of Geography
jharrin@ksu.edu
Ignacio Ciampitti, Crop Production and Cropping Systems Specialist
ciampitti@ksu.edu
Mary Knapp, Weather Data Library
mknapp@ksu.edu
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