High Heat Until Midweek, then Some Relief

Monday 10 AM

From the first sunbeam sparkling through the morning dew to the last glimmer of northwest blue at evening dusk, this is a hot summer day from the Great Lakes on east. In some areas puffy cumulus will probe for expressways to the stratosphere, but in most cases dry air will cut their climb before any menace is realized. However, in a corridor from the northern Plains to the Upper Great Lakes, there will be rounds of showers and thunderstorms.

As for the heat and humidity in the Northeast, these are the visitors we longed for during winter's bitter blusters from snow-topped, ice-encapsulated tundra that froze our faces, whipped through the cityscape canyons, and twisted the brittle leafless branches of our wintry world (well, at least it's that way for a while in most winters). But when when these hot and humid visitors they actually get here, they can outlive their welcome.

Sure, the morning temperature faithfully representing July was bearable, but the afternoon edges into blistering heat we get from air masses that are fugitives from the desert. We face furnace fires of grandiose grilling, the super-searing, intensely igneous, fiercely firing and flaring, brazenly broiling heat that takes us to the pinnacle of perspiration, the summit of sweat and a surfeit of sultriness that is certainly sweltering. Every so often an unseen breeze will ruffle the leaves and blow warm puffs in our faces; mostly it is calm and still. Summer haze muffles the sharp skyline.

This video suggests how weather changes will proceed this week.

We usually associate hot weather with southwest winds. However, if hot air moves far to the north, then any flow from that area will still be hot. This map shows isobars (line of equal barometric pressure) tracing out a southwesterly flow in the Midwest but a northwesterly flow in the Northeast.