When will Central NY’s brutal stretch of hot, dry weather finally end?

Update: Syracuse reached 90 degrees this afternoon, making it the eighth day this month to reach that mark.

Syracuse, N.Y. — Central New York has been much hotter and drier than normal this month, and July’s not over yet.

But relief is on the way — from the heat, at least.

Temperatures are likely to fall midweek, and we might even see a handful of days of below-normal temperatures. There’s not much rain in the National Weather Service forecast, though, so you’ll probably need to keep watering those thirsty plants for a while.

So far this month, the average temperature in Syracuse has been more than 3 degrees above normal. Rainfall has been just a third of what we’d usually see by this point.

We’ve had seven days of at least 90 degrees, and the highs today and Tuesday could get that hot again. That would make 13 days of at least 90 degrees so far this summer. The average for an entire year is 10 days.

If the forecast holds up for the next few days, July 2025 would tie for the seventh-hottest July since records began in 1902.

A cold front from the north should bring some cooler temperatures later in the week. The high on Thursday, Friday and Saturday will be around 80, a couple of degrees cooler than normal, the weather service predicts.

It’s also been dry, as our brown lawns can attest. Syracuse has had just 1.7 inches of rain in July, about half of normal. Most of that rain fell early in the month; over the past two weeks, Syracuse has less than an inch.

The combination of dryness and heat means there’s not much water in the soil for grass and shrubs to take up. This is the driest the soil has been in at least seven years in Geneva, the nearest U.S. Department of Agriculture soil moisture gauge to Syracuse.

While Wednesday’s the cold front could bring some showers, the odds are less than 50% and any rain that does fall is likely to be light. Over the next seven days, the weather service forecasts less than a quarter-inch of rain.