Hot & Dry Thursday-Sunday AM

Lots of storms in the Northeast Gulf and in a line from west of Hattiesburg to near Gulfport. The line represents the remains of a front separating the hot humid air over us with the hotter, and dry air to our north. An upper air trough will push that through our area tomorrow giving us that dry Thursday into part of Sunday and pushing anything tropic further south into the Gulf.

Looking at the 4:42 PM radar, you’ll see that lightning is breaking out to the west of that line indicating the direction it is prone to move in. The lightning is from towering cumulus where the air is rising rapidly without raining, so that’s why there’s no radar return where some of the bolts are. I expect the line to become broken and move slowly westward and end up somewhere near Bogalusa - Picayune - Pearlington by about 9 PM before it finally starts to die a few hours after sunset. It’s a coin toss to see whether it will reach Slidell.

The visible satellite image shows a lot of storms in the Eastern Gulf and they will all be heading south as the dry air moves in from the north. That dry air in the atmosphere’s mid-levels will be a big obstacle for any development to overcome, which is one of the reasons why I doubt much will come of this. See Long Range Ramblings below.

The Foreca graphic overdoes the days with rainfall - Thursday through Sunday morning will be dry. Before that….expect scattered storms to pop up along the I/10-12 Corridor from Mandeville-Slidell-Gulfport in the late morning hours tomorrow since that dry line “front” will be near. Storms will head to the Southshore, so Covington-Picayune should be dry.

It’s always a gutsy forecast to call for a dry day here in July, but I’m calling for three in a row. High temperatures should reach 97 give or take a degree on the Fourth. With drier air, lows should be low 70s in most rural suburban areas of the Northshore Friday and Saturday morning. Maybe enough for your to stop sweating long enough to clean the driveway of firework debris. Enough moisture should filter back in from the east late Sunday to give us those scattered afternoon storms. After that…typical summer with 30% afternoon storm chances with highs near 90 to start next week.

Very few of the models are developing anything from those storms, which should spread out in a more SW to NE fashion from offshore Tampa - Daytona Beach - east of Charleston, SC by Saturday. Again, the likely reason is the dry air in the mid levels. In fact, those models that do develop a depression favor the area for off the Carolinas because of the upper level wind pattern. So…there’s nothing to be concerned about at this point.

Next week should feature increasing heat as we move towards Wednesday-Friday with highs mid 90s. Afternoon shower chances 25-30% with mostly light amounts. Rain chances and amounts picking up by the following weekend, July 12-13.

Foreca graphic for Pensacola Beach shows the hot and shower-less weekend (90 at the beach = 95 inland), but fails to show the expected return of moisture with shower chances starting late Sunday and Monday. In short, it’s not too much different than here. Only one caveat: If you head to Panama City, you’re more likely to see shower chances starting on Saturday, but more likely on Sunday.