For many, it felt familiar when the Artscape 2024 event was canceled on Friday and Saturday.
“Are we ready to officially call this the Curse of Artscape?” asked one user on social media platform X around 5pm on Saturday
Many Baltimore residents and art scene enthusiasts may be starting to feel that way, whether it's rain, heat or both, as this year's Friday and Saturday events were canceled due to storms.
This year's Artscape was supposed to be the first three-day festival since the 2019 coronavirus pandemic, while 2023's Saturday program canceled festivities due to Tropical Storm Ophelia. After being canceled between 2020 and 2022, it's easy to see why this event feels like a curse.
Since 2000, Artscape has occurred almost exclusively in July, usually experiencing some sort of heat or rain-related weather event.
An analysis of Artscape weekend temperature and precipitation data recorded by the National Weather Service from 2000 to 2024 shows that only five festival weekends did not record any precipitation and did not have a daily high temperature of at least 95 degrees.
Of those five years — 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014 — only three had three weeks of temperatures below 90 degrees.
However, the recorded precipitation does not mean that it occurred during the Artscape period. Since 2000, 14 of 22 Artscape weekends have recorded varying amounts of rainfall in downtown Baltimore, with just 0.06 inches falling on Saturday and Sunday in 2004. inches or more, two of which were this year and last year.
Hot weather has never dampened people's enthusiasm before, as in 2019, when festivalgoers braved temperatures of more than 100 degrees. In fact, for the past two years, the event has almost always been held in July, with four weekends, one of which falls on the hottest day of the month. Baltimore's high on Friday was 102 degrees, but we won't know until the end of August whether that's the hottest temperature of the month.
Since 2000, 10 of 22 Artscape weekends have had at least one day with temperatures rising above 95 degrees. The threshold for a Code Red overheat warning in Baltimore City is 95 degrees on the heat index, a metric that uses humidity and temperature to measure how the temperature feels. Some Artscape days may feel hotter than apparent, such as Saturday, which had an afternoon high heat index of 107 degrees.
Seven Artscapes experienced at least one day with temperatures of at least 95 degrees and any amount of precipitation.
