The first person to enter this year’s Cardinal Weather summer heat prediction contest ended up finishing in first place.Jo HeinleinJo Heinlein of Wytheville missed by only 1 degree combined on her guesses for hottest temperatures of the season at two locations, tying Donna Smith of Eagle Rock, but winning the tiebreaker based on submitting her entry first — in this case, literally the first person to email an entry, less than 3 hours after the contest posted on the Cardinal News website on May 29 and less than an hour after its link appeared in the weekly Cardinal Weather newsletter.Heinlein and Smith are both recognized as winners of the contest, but Heinlein’s tiebreaker enables her to claim the $25 gift card for first place.* This week’s Cardinal Weather column: Misty gloom of dying coastal storm extends September’s cool startHeinlein guessed that her new hometown of Wytheville would peak at 94 degrees this summer while Galax would top out at 92. Wytheville’s hottest temperature, according to the National Weather Service, was indeed 94 degrees while Galax reached 91 on its hottest day. The total miss between the two locations was 1 degree.Smith guessed 102 for Roanoke and 99 for Covington, as her Eagle Rock home is about halfway between those two locations. Roanoke hit 103 and Covington 99 for the hottest temperatures of summer, meaning she missed Roanoke by 1 degree and was on the money for Covington, or a single degree miss on the combined picks.Five entrants tied for the next position — technically third place, since two people tied for first — by being 3 degrees off on their two picks. That included husband and wife Jerry and Pam Burgess, of Botetourt County; Christi Conner of Salem, Shelby Dickerson of Roanoke, and Vicki Harris of Gladys. Among those bronze-medal-tying entries, there were two perfect picks for a single site: Jerry Burgess predicted 102 for South Boston and Christi Conner picked 103 for Roanoke.Contestants were asked in late May and early June to email the hottest temperature guesses between June 15 and August 31 for any two of 16 listed locations spanning Cardinal News country throughout Southwest and Southside Virginia. I received 32 entries.One unfortunate oddity was that Lexington’s observations ceased on July 11, so some of the hotter days of the year that followed in mid-July plus the entire month of August have no data. Lexington’s hottest temperature goes down as 96 on July 6, 10, and 11, even though it likely got hotter than that around July 15. (If anyone in the Lexington area is interested in being the next co-operative weather observer there, please contact Dan Nealey at: daniel.nealey@noaa.gov.)Back on June 12, I made hottest temperature picks for all 16 sites. Like the majority of other entries this year, I tended to go a little hotter than what actually occurred at most sites. In my case, I was a little too hot on 14 of the 16 sites, averaging a 2.2-degree error on the warm end. The only location that I got perfectly correct was Covington’s 99. The only site for which I underestimated the temperature was the one closest to where I live, Roanoke, picking 102 when the high hit 103.Be on the lookout next month for the start of the annual Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest.The hottest temperature of the summer at each site in the contest is listed below.Abingdon, 97 Appomattox, 99 Blacksburg, 95 Burke’s Garden, 89 Clintwood, 92 Covington, 99 Danville, 100 Galax, 91 John H. Kerr Dam, 103 Lexington, 96* Lynchburg, 99 Martinsville, 99 Roanoke, 103 South Boston, 102 Wise, 90 Wytheville, 94· Lexington’s data ceased being recorded after July 11.Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley. Sign up for his weekly newsletter: The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday The Weekly A roundup of our 10 most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays The Weekend A roundup of local events, delivered Thursdays Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. Delivered monthly Sign up The post First entry received wins first place in Cardinal Weather heat prediction contest appeared first on Cardinal News.First published by Cardinal News.