I’ve been
talking over the last few days about the high-pressure ridge heat dome that is
going to be setting up. Currently the feature that is going to cause this is
over the Northern Pacific.
This will
build a deep trough in western North America with a steep ridge of high pressure over
the eastern half of North America. This is going to bring a lot of heat into the
Midwest, Southern Plains and Southeast.
The high-pressure
ridge is going to be a heat dome bringing a multiday heat wave that’s going to
impact the Plains and Midwest. Some of this heat is going to extend east into
the Northeast and Coastal US.
Under the
dome there is going to be widespread upper 80’s and well into the 90’s. With the
southern Plains getting into the 100’s. Heat indexes (combination of heat and
dew points) are going to be extremely uncomfortable. As I said in the earlier
post very hot temperatures and humid conditions in parts of the Northeast and
Mid-Atlantic will be oppressive early next week. For much of next week, the
core of the heat is likely to be centered over the Ohio Valley into the Tennessee
and Mississippi Valleys. While the
Northeast will be on the edge, some of that heat in the Midwest is going to
extend into Western Pennsylvania and Western New York State. It will be a bit
cooler across the rest of the Northeast.
The heat
dome will drift back west as we get past the fourth of July and will likely basically
sit there as we head toward the middle of July. Something else I said in the last couple of
post about this, we’re likely to see rounds of ridge-riding thunderstorms mesoscale
convective systems (organized thunderstorms) and even mesoscale convective
complexes (special type of MCS that is a large, circular, long-lived cluster of
showers and thunderstorms) and possibly some derechos (fast-moving clusters of
thunderstorms with destructive winds), rotate around the rim of the ring of
fire impacting areas of the Upper Midwest, Northeast into the Middle Atlantic. So,
there is a chance for some active severe weather in this pattern.
The Tropics
There’s
nothing really going on in the Atlantic tropics right now. Currently the
tropical environment is unsupportive. There are rumors of something trying to
form off the Southeast Coast. But I think the odds of this becoming anything
tropical are very low. As we move
forward in time the conditions in the Atlantic Basin will become somewhat more
favorable for development with lower wind shear and less dry air. But even with
that, I don’t think we’re going to see anything tropical develop over the next
7 days to maybe 10 days.
The National
Hurricane Center agrees with this assessment.
Have a great night!
