Turning Up the Heat in Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis

June 15, 2012; 6:03 PM
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The weather through the up coming weekend over a large part of the Midwest will be ideal for most summer activities including a day at the amusement park. (flickr image taken at Cedar Point, Ohio by amcnair)

Mother Nature will turn up the heat under sunshine over much of the Midwest late in the week into the Father's Day weekend.

An area of high pressure bringing cool air and low humidity to the region now will slide to the east later this week. As it does, a south to southwesterly flow will bring in much warmer and progressively more humid air.

The less-than-ideal swimming weather will be replaced by a pool-lover's bonanza by this weekend.

While record highs are not likely to be broken, temperatures within a few degrees of 90 are in store for many cities including Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Huntington, Indianapolis, Louisville, Milwaukee and St. Louis.

While the air mass moving in is not extreme, the dry ground will help foster the heat at the local level.

Dry ground behaves more like a desert, allowing the sun's energy to focus more on warming the ground, which in turn warms the air near the ground.

Higher temperatures increase evaporation rates, drying the ground even more and hence warming the air even more.

Higher humidity levels can lead to spotty late-day thundershower activity over the weekend. However, most areas will not receive substantial rainfall, except for the swath from eastern Nebraska to the Upper Michigan Peninsula.

This swath, which also reaches over part of the northern Plains, will be the place to be for rainfall right into much of next week as a series of storm systems brings rounds of showers and thunderstorms.

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