The month that wouldn't cool off has finally, mercifully, ended.

August reached record-setting levels of misery in many ways. To name a few:

-�The highest average high temperature: 109.

-�The highest average low temperature: 87.5.

-�The hottest August day ever: 117.

There should be a T-shirt saying: "I survived the August of 2011." And it should be cotton.

The average temperature for the month - the high plus the low divided by two - was 98.3 degrees.

That leaves August tied for the hottest month ever. The real surprise here is that it's August. Every other month in the top-5 list is a July.



August storms | July storms | See the forecast

Arizonans expect this kind of heat in July or June. But not in August. By the end of the eighth month, the heat is supposed to begin ratcheting down.

The difference this year is that August never really got wet, and it never really dried out. It was stuck in the middle.

Wet air would have brought thunderstorms, the kind of monsoon weather Phoenix expects this time of year, which would have lowered the temperatures.

Dry air would have allowed the heat of the day to dissipate overnight, keeping mornings and evenings cool, or at least not unbearably hot.

This August had neither.

"The dew points remained fairly high," said Jessica Nolte, a meteorologist with of the National Weather Service. "But there was not enough moisture to generate storms to bring some rain-cooled air."

And so there were 13 days when the temperature hit 110 or higher. That was an August record, too.

The low temperature for the entire month was reached at 5:08 in the morning on Aug. 4, when it dropped to 81 degrees. Never before has the lowest single temperature in any month been so high.

Now, nearly a month later, things haven't changed much. If anything, they're hotter.

Typically, when children have been back in school for a few weeks and football season is starting, it is reasonable to expect cooler evenings.

That is not happening this year. The National Weather Service is forecasting highs of 111 degrees, or above, for the next 10 days.

"People keep asking me when it is going to cool off, and the flippant answer is 'Halloween,' " said Paul I�iguez of the Weather Service. "But the weather pattern right now is just not conducive to cooling down. It's going to stay warm. Very warm."

Across the Valley, people are ready for a break.

On his route near 16th and Flower streets in Phoenix, mailman John Graves was just returning to his truck from a mail stop.

Four years ago, Graves left his route in Alaska for one in Phoenix. The trucks, he realized then, are not air-conditioned.

"There is no AC in here," Graves said with a laugh from the driver's seat. "Just a 4-inch fan. And you know what it blows on you? That's right. Hot air."

Graves knows that the James A. Farley Post Office in New York City bears a slogan which closely resembles something the Greek historian Herodotus once wrote.

It has become an unofficial slogan for mail carriers.

It says: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

Graves was happy Herodotus remembered to mention the heat. "This is the heat they were talking about when they came up with that saying," he said.

When Graves is on his route, however, he sees that a month like this brings out the best in people. All day long he gets offers of cold water and Gatorade.

"It's all day, every day," Graves said. "Makes it a little more bearable."