Summer of '88 was a "good" time to launch a GW scare! I remember it vividly -- in Boston, the temperature went to the high 90s on June 13, and highs stayed pretty much 90 or over all summer, I think well into October; an overnight low of about 73 was about as good as it got.
The heat was nationwide. I hate the heat, so I ran for the TV as soon as I got home from work to tune in to the weather. That whole summer, the jet stream stayed about at the US-Canada border, occasionally (but not often) dropping down a bit over the very northwestern tip of the country.
The other thing I recall about that awful summer may have been only local: there seemed to be almost constant reports of medical waste washing up on beaches.
I remember the reports of the medical waste washing up on the east coast beaches. I am in the midwest and I do not remember summer 88 to be a hot year per se. But I do remember this was President Reagan's last full year in office, and GHWBush was in full campaign mode. And Soviet styled communism was losing its ability to finance itself to continue the never ending need to increase its grasp to survive. As President Reagan drew that proverbial line in the sand against the Soviet styled militarized march of enslavement to survive, the Marxist adherents went underground and emerged as Mother Earth's caretakers.