The heat wave drags on....

On and on the heat wave goes with no real clear end in sight..At least as far as temperatures are concerned. Like today, some widely scattered, mostly late afternoon and evening storms will take place tomorrow and Wednesday, mostly on the Northshore and in Mississippi. Chances go up a notch into the 50-50 category area wide from Friday and Saturday since the upper level heat dome will breakdown slightly. But then the heat and lack of rain will return for early next week.

I don’t see eye-to-eye with the Foreca graphic on rainfall timing, but we agree on the rainfall amounts and temperatures. Overall rainfall totals for the week will fall in the few tenths of an inch to perhaps an inch in isolated locations. That’s not much, so please water your yard.

Mondays and Wednesdays shower chances are highest on the Northshore, ranging from 30% where most of us live along the I-12/I-10 corridor to 40% in locations 20 miles or more north of the Lake or Sound. Chances will run about 20% Southshore.

As usual, high and low temperatures will show north vs. south variation. Locations 30 miles or more inland, such as Bogalusa will see higher high temps. reaching 98-100, but lower morning temperatures 75-77. Hammond also runs a little high because of its distance from the Lake. The rest of us should stop in the mid 90s but low temperatures will be in the 78-82 range.

Sometime late Friday and/or Saturday, a band of storms seems likely to develop in Mississippi and head south impacting most of us. It’s possible that the highs will stay in the upper 80s on one of those days.

The last weekend of August should see a similar breakdown of the heat dome with an increase of storms and highs in the upper 80s. If I read my European tea leaves correctly, the heat builds back in during the first few days of September and lingers until mid-September before we get our first front to give us rain and cooler temperatures. However, I might need to venture over to the English Team Room a few times this week and have them brew several pots before I become a firm believer.

In the tropics, the tea has been brewed and put on ice. Nothing is cooking in the Tropical Atlantic nor is anything likely to form in the next week. After that, models try to spin something up somewhere near Bermuda or north of there. Regardless, it’s not our worry here in the Gulf.

Again, I don’t know what modeling Foreca is looking at when it prepared this, but I see the greater shower chances tomorrow, Wednesday, then especially Friday-Sunday. Moderate rip current risks in the Florida beaches Monday - Wednesday, but not so much Gulf Shores.