Did it feel like summer was a bit better than 2011's version? Perhaps a whole lot better? Maybe even the best summer Seattle's had in years, if not decades, once the calendar turned to August?

Last year when summer went into hiding, and being an admitted weather geek, I created a secondary Twitter feed @SummerMinutes and started counting the minutes Seattle was above 80 degrees. As expected, through much of the summer, it added up to less than a jaunt to the latest Hollywood blockbuster. But with some warm weather at the buzzer in September, Seattle managed 3,323 minutes above 80 degrees.

This year, as you might expect we did a bit better. In fact, it's just over 1,000 minutes better: 4,388 minutes at or above 80 degrees. (That's at the University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences Building, which tracks temperature by minutes.

While last year's warmest date gave us 352 minutes of summer, this year had seven dates even warmer, including a pair of mid 90s that tallied over 10 hours.

So for my fellow weather geek fans for 2012, this was the number of minutes the temperature at the University of Washington was at or above 80 degrees.

July 8: 18
July 11: 8
July 12: 24
July 26: 8
Aug 4: 602
Aug 5: 585
Aug 6: 90
Aug 11: 168
Aug 12: 376
Aug 13: 291
Aug 15: 419
Aug 16: 600
Aug 17: 461
Sept 6: 88
Sept 7: 390
Sept 17: 34
Sept 18: 226
Total minutes of summer: 4,388. Or 73 hours and 8 minutes.

By Month:
July: 58 min (1%)
Aug.: 3592 min (82%)
Sept.: 1703 min (17%).
Best Day: Aug. 4 (602 min)

We'll see how 2013 does!