When the thermometer reached 107 yesterday, I was curious how long it has been since Wichita reached such lofty levels.

Not long ago at all, as it turns out: the mercury reached 108, 108, 109 and 109 from July 17-20, 2006.

A week later, Wichita had a day that mirrored Tuesday: the temperature hit 105 on July 26 – and then it rained. The gauge at Mid-Continent Airport recorded .21 of an inch that day.

After Wichita reached 107 yesterday, showers moved through the metropolitan area. The airport recorded .01 of an inch of precipitation.

The advisory is in effect until 8 p.m. and includes Butler, Kingman, Sedgwick, Harper, Sumner, Cowley, Elk, Wilson, Chautauqua, Montgomery and Labette counties.

Among the cities included in the advisory are El Dorado, Augusta, Kingman, Anthony, Harper, Wellington, Winfield, Arkansas City, Chanute, Coffeyville and Parsons.

With high humidity levels and temperatures soaring above 100, the heat index is expected to top 105 in portions of southern Kansas, weather service officials said.

The last time Wichita hit 100 in June was on June 29, 1998, when it was 105. That was the last of 9 days of 100-degree temperatures that June…including a high of 108 on June 20 of that year.

Wichita averages a little more than one 100-degree day in June each year, and 2009 appears poised to top that, with similar highs forecast for Friday and Saturday.

Theodore Roosevelt was president, Willis Bailey was the governor of Kansas and a team from Pennsylvania – Pittsburgh – made it to the first-ever World Series the previous fall.

Meanwhile, in Wichita, the thermometer reached 74 degrees.

Five score and five years later, Wichita reached 74 again. Barack Obama is president, Kathleen Sebelius is governor, and a team from Pennsylvania – Philadelphia – won the World Series the previous fall.

At least Russia and Japan didn’t go to war this time.

The record for Feb. 6 in Wichita is 74, set in 1904. Today’s forecast calls for a high in the low 70s, and forecasters aren’t ruling out the possibility of a new mark.

But National Weather Service meteorologist Leon Wasinger said he’s not optimistic the 105-year-old record will fall today. Blame the strong winds, he said.

“There’s an awful lot of mixing going on,” he said, referring to how much the wind is stirring the air. That tends to equalize temperatures, pulling them down. Quieter breezes would allow the air to simmer and build up more heat.

Saturday will be warm, too, with highs in the 60s…but forecasters aren’t expecting the record of 69 – set in 1926 – to tumble.

And I couldn’t help but wonder if the above-normal temperatures will play a role in the outcome of the presidential election. There’s that sports theory that claims every time the Washington Redskins win a football game the Sunday before a presidential election, the incumbent party stays in office; if the Redskins lose, the party not in power wins.

I’m curious to see if there’s a trend linked to temperatures above 60 degrees in Wichita on Election Day. I’ll do some poking around and see what I can find out.

A November day so warm it reminds you of tornado season? Hey, I’ll take it.

More than 10 inches of rain fell in Gove County over about a 5-hour period Wednesday, but no tropical storm or hurricane is to blame.

“It was a crazy amount of rain,” Mick McGuire, a senior meteorologist with the Goodland office of the National Weather Service, told me.

A resident who lives four miles southeast of Grainfield in Gove County recorded 10.6 inches of rain, and a nearby neighbor reported 11 inches. To put those totals in perspective, they surpass even the 10.31 inches of rain that fell on Wichita over a 24-hour period on Sept. 12.

A cluster of thunderstorms developed along a warm front, McGuire said, and as they moved east new storms would develop along the same line. It’s a pattern known as “training” – storms following the same line like railroad cars on a track – and it can lead to substantial amounts of rain falling in a small area.

Remarkably, no flash flooding was reported as a result of the heavy rain.

“It was a pretty small area,” McGuire said, comparing it to “a bullseye” on radar. You can see that in the radar image below.

Rainfall totals from Wednesday in northwest Kansas

There have even been a few years when Wichita never hit 100 during the summer, though the most recent case was 1927.

Years that see late-arriving 100s have one thing in common: plenty of moisture in the spring and early summer. That makes sense, really. Energy that would otherwise be pushing temperatures soaring is instead being spent returning moisture to the atmosphere.