Spigot is off; hottest of the year ahead

And…. just like that the spigot has been moved to the off position. After a mostly sunny and reasonably hot day tomorrow, the heat will be on. We’ll see upper 90s starting Thursday stretching through next Tuesday. This Sunday and Monday will see the hottest weather with most of us seeing 97s and 98s - perhaps there will be a few 100’s in urban and inland areas while those of you right on the water will stop in the 94-96 degree range. Of course everyone’s car thermometer will reach 100, but you know better than to believe them. Right?

For those of you traveling to the Alabama and NW Florida beaches, the weather will be quite a bit different there, so read that section.

Finally, there’s something to talk about in the tropics but it’s not much and it won’t impact us.

Also, this rain system that moved through Sunday night into Monday illustrates some of the problems with forecasting summer precipitation. In my last newsletter, I correctly pointed out that the west-to-east band of storms through Washington Parish was sagging south and that rainfall odds would be going up for the I-10/12 corridor. That did happen, but instead of it moving 20-40 miles south and stopping, it moved 60-80 miles southward through the night and stopped south of Lake Ponchartrain giving the Southshore a dousing that I did not expect. Thunderstorm bands and clusters have self-propagating mechanisms that wreak havoc with forecasting models. We do better with larger systems such as hurricanes and winter fronts.

The Foreca graphic really captures the dry spell. Yes, there’s a small 20% chance of a shower on Saturday evening, mostly in areas 10-20 miles inland from the MS Gulf Coast, and the next chance of widespread showers and storms will be over a week away — late next Wednesday. Foreca incorrectly spreads out the rain chances into Monday and Tuesday of next week. So, if you didn’t get much rain this week, start watering soon.

This weekend into early next week will feature the hottest weather of the year. Expect heat advisories to be issued. Morning lows will increase from the 72-74 range in most Northshore locations into the 77-79 range. That means increased surface humidity which will add to the misery.

You may have heard some people crow about a tropical development in the Northeast Gulf this weekend. True, a few of the models had indicated that, but they have since backed off. I don’t jump at every model that shows anything, preferring to wait until several models repeatedly show something in an environment that is conducive for development. Though I won’t be the first one to sound the alarm, I’m much less likely to eat tropical crow.

Here, an upper level trough will be dropping down the East Coast into NE Florida. The weakest of circulations is visible in this ECMWF model forecast of surface winds for Saturday AM where I placed the red “o”. This doesn’t develop, probably because it’s under an upper level trough when tropical storms develop under ridges. Plus, the mid-level is dry. Even if it did develop, it would take a few days to wobble around and then move NE into Florida and out into the Atlantic because of upper level winds. The most likely impact: Making Gainesville even more of a swampy place for the Gators.

Closer to home, expect a few days with typical scattered afternoon storms from the 24-26th. Temperatures could be a bit more reasonable - low-mid 90s. Then, models indicate another dry spell for 4-6 days before some serious moisture moves in during the first week of August.

Enjoy the next few days there before afternoon showers become the norm on Saturday. The further east you go the more showers and storms you will see with this pattern since the heat dome will be to our west. Of course, with the increased cloudiness and storms, temperatures will stay in the 80s, quite a bit different than what we will see here in Louisiana and Coastal MS. So pick you poison: 97 with heat here and your local pool with crawfish-boil temperatures or a trip to the cooler beach where you’ll have to carefully time your trips to the water between the bolts.