Did summer take a break? Sacramento temperatures aren’t sizzling so far
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- Sacramento summer 2025 milder than 2024, with just two 100-degree days since June.
- A trough over the West Coast lowered temperatures, unlike the East’s heat ridge.
- July's average high has been 90.9, below the 2020-24 July average of 94.9 degrees.
It’s not just you: Sacramento’s infamously scorching summer temperatures have been less scorching than usual this year.
The cooler weather, resulting from a low-pressure weather pattern called a trough over the western United States, stands out especially relative to last summer’s record-breaking heat, meteorologists said.
The recorded temperature in Sacramento has only reached triple digits twice since the start of June, hitting 100 degrees on June 28 and 102 degrees on July 11, according to the National Weather Service Sacramento office. Last year, the temperature climbed to 100 degrees or higher four times in June and 16 times across all of July, which this year has only 10 days remaining.
“Sometimes we have these anomalous summers where it’s cooler than normal,” said Dakari Anderson, a meteorologist at the weather service. “As we remember last year and how hot it was, and then we swing back the other direction — can definitely affect how we interpret the season.”
Anderson said the trough, in contrast to a high-pressure ridge heating the eastern U.S., explains the current weather pattern but may not hold for the entire summer.
“Everything is kind of controlled by the long-wave weather patterns around the globe,” said Jan Null, a former National Weather Service forecaster who now runs Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay. He said those patterns are resting in place for now, causing the extended temperate period near the West Coast.
Null said he expects that effect to last through the end of July, after which the weather may return to more normal fluctuations.
The average daily maximum temperature last month was 88.9 degrees, Anderson said, slightly lower than the average high of 89.5 degrees in June across the prior five years — but higher than the 2023 average high for the month, 83.3 degrees. The average maximum temperature for July from 2020 to 2024 was 94.9 degrees; so far this month, the average high has been 90.9 degrees.
A heat wave in late June and early July last summer set a record for the hottest 20-day stretch in Sacramento, with an average maximum of 103.8 degrees.
“If we take last summer, last July, and compare it to this July, we’re like at total polar opposites,” Null said.
“I guess with heat, it’s not polar opposites,” he added.
This story was originally published July 22, 2025 at 12:01 PM.