The following is a NY Times article: 

It’s a gross, grungy, disgusting summer-in-the-city tradition: the muggy 90-degree day or, worse still, the 99-degree day.

But this summer has been conspicuously different in New York City. Not one 99-degree day in Central Park. Not a single day that the temperature even approached 90. For just the second time in 140 years of record keeping, the temperature failed to reach 90 in either June or July.

The daily average last month was at or below normal every day but two. The temperature broke 80 on 16 days in New York – one more day than in Fairbanks, Alaska. Depending on Friday’s high, this was the second or third coolest June and July recorded in New York. If August follows the same pattern – and the latest forecast through midmonth predicts that it will – this could be the coolest summer on record.

The result: relief, lower electric bills, spared lives and undisturbed slumber.

But this being New York, New Yorkers have also recalibrated their threshold for heat complaints. This summer, 85 is the new 95.

In the end, this will have been the coolest June and July since either 1903 or 1881, when sweltering New Yorkers grumbled about a sudden early August heat wave.

The relatively cool first half of summer in the Northeast and Upper Midwest has had far-reaching effects.

In New York, Con Ed produced 5.5 percent less power in June than the year before, never appealed for special conservation protocols and reported no blackouts or brownouts. Daily peak use, which reached 10,934 megawatts on Tuesday, was well below this summer’s projected high of 11,945 megawatts. Many electric bills have shrunk by 6 percent or more.

Attendance at city beaches through July 28 was down 30 percent, from 7.3 million to 5.1 million.

From July 1 to 28 in 2008, the Emergency Medical Service answered 134 heat-related calls. This year, there were 41. In 2008, the office of the chief medical examiner blamed the heat for nine deaths, all in June. This year, not a single heat-related death has been reported.

The threshold for opening cooling centers for the aging and other vulnerable New Yorkers was never reached. Nor was the 90-degree trigger requiring that carriage horses be stabled.

One reason for the record-breaking low temperatures was the record-breaking rainfall and accompanying cloud cover. The deluge of more than 16 inches (twice the average amount) made it the second wettest June and July on record, edging 1928. The wettest June and July was 1975, with more than 19 inches.

As a result, reservoirs are at 97 percent of capacity versus an average of about 90 percent. In part because it has been cooler, water consumption plummeted compared with last July, from 1.2 billion gallons a day to less than 1.1 billion. Complaints about open fire hydrants were halved, to 2,652.

Even before summer, the temperature hit a record high of 92 degrees on April 26.

The last time the temperature never reached 90 in June and July was 1996.

Apart from the humidity, the heat index and any other measure of your misery above or below ground, there is another reason you may feel hotter on any given day than the announced temperature in Central Park would suggest: the official thermometer there is housed comfortably in the shade.

(LINK to NY Times)