Jul. 2--Hot? You think the thermometer hovering at 100 last week is about as hot as it can get on the Mississippi Coast?

The record books tell us to think differently.

Think 104. Think temperatures above 100 four days in a row. Think hot enough, long enough to send a thermometer running for the shade.

Already this year, Gulfport reached a monthly record on June 23 at 102. Biloxi was 100. Although the National Weather Service hasn't yet processed all June data, there's no doubt summer started as a scorcher.

"You get the winds just right and all the Coast counties can 'torch out,' really heat up," says Christopher Bannan, meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Slidell. "Torch out is not a technical term, but it explains what's going on."

NWS records show it has reached 104 at least 19 times in eight years since 1924. That's more heat blastings than hurricane thrashings in the same time period, with extreme heat days more than tripling if you count anything above 100.

Take for example the year 2000. Remember? Probably not. Extreme heat tends to fry our brains along with plants, grass and shoeless feet.

Add the Katrina factor, when our memories of heat got skewed after sweltering for weeks without air conditioning.

But the proof is in the records. August 2000 was already a scorcher before Biloxi and Bay St. Louis recorded multiple days in a row above 100. Coastal and Piney Woods towns shared high temps, although all did not reach the epoch 104.

In the Bay that year, 104 arrived on Aug. 17 and 19. Picayune's came Aug. 21 and Biloxi's came last on Aug. 29. The Coast was bested on that same day by Mobile at 105.

"It's the hottest it's ever been," The Sun Herald recorded the words of an NWS meteorologist after the last Biloxi blast.

To get picky about who was hottest in 2000, poor Poplarville had reached 105 for two days in a row six weeks earlier -- in July.

If the 2000 details are a bit boring remember this: They put in perspective July and August as our two hottest months. These statistics are about real temperatures, not "feels like" heat index wannabes.

NWS data is gathered from earlier sources and from its current Automated Surface Observing System.

The latter is more comprehensive and involves more cities than earlier temperature gatherings. Biloxi, for example, has one of the nation's oldest recording centers because of the military, according to Bannan.

That's why Biloxi has the Coast's first known 104 mark, on Aug. 23, 1924. That was followed by 104 on Aug. 5, 1947, and Aug. 30, 1951.

"A broiling sun beat down mercilessly on the heat-exhausted deep South" reported the 1951 Sun Herald.

More recent years for the 104 mark our coastal or Piney Woods communities include 1969, 1980, 1986 and 1989, but 2000 takes the flaming cake.

For now. July has just begun.

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