Blistering Heat for the Last Week of June

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Joe Lundberg

Blistering Heat for the Last Week of June

June 25, 2012; 10:20 AM

Monday, 11:35 a.m.

My time is short, but the nuts and bolts of this week's forecast are NOT about Debby, the weakened tropical storm that is rolling around aimlessly at the moment off the coast of the Florida Panhandle. It is beginning to move slowly northeastward and should drift in that general east or northeast direction over the next couple of days, continuing to lash the Florida Peninsula with heavy rain and gusty winds.

The presence of Debby, however, is helping have an impact on the current weather and the weather to come, specifically as it relates to heat. Look at the upper-level flow pattern today:

The large-scale features are very impressive! The deepening trough coming into the East, though, is going to be blunted a bit by all of the heat being thrown off Debby to the north. That heat is manifesting itself in record or near-record heat across the South and into the eastern Rockies. Look at the highs from Sunday:

The incredible heat will easily expand eastward this week, faster than I had thought last week. And what heat it is going to be. Look at the latest NAM projected 850mb temperatures for Thursday evening:

The air mass that promoted the mid- to upper 90s kind of heat in the mid-Atlantic into portions of New England last Wednesday through Friday had 850mb temperatures of +21C or maybe +22C. This has +15 and higher for places like Chicago, St. Louis, and Columbus, and it is expanding rapidly eastward. That may well mean temperatures over 100 over a LARGE area of the country by Thursday. The NAM 2-meter temperature forecast concurs:

This could just obliterate records this week, as the heat will return to the East by Friday and linger into Saturday before ANY kind of cooling can take place, and even then, it may be tough to get it back to normal for a while. In other words, you might want to start preparing now for a run of just unrelenting heat and probably some oppressive humidity in the coming days, if it hasn't already started for you!

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com

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