Warm Pattern Emerging as Spring Officially Fades to Summer

Tuesday, 11:35 a.m.

I enjoyed a fun weekend in Middleville, Mich., at the National 24-Hour Challenge. Well, it was supposed to be 24 hours. Two rounds of heavy, gusty thunderstorms in the wee hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning reduced it to a 21-hour, 15-minute challenge. Despite that, some people racked up some amazing miles. I was able to establish a new personal best at over 226 miles before my body started to betray me. I'll blame it on insufficient training and inadequate sleep for not getting more! Still, it was a fantastic experience, well worth my time and effort, and I will probably do it again next year. It was a great environment and well run. My kudos to the organizers of the event and to the volunteer army that made everything run smoothly, even when an audible had to be called in the middle of the night because of those thunderstorms! Those same thunderstorms, by the way, destroyed my tent, so it stayed behind in the refuse bin. Thankfully I wasn't in it when it finally gave up the ghost! Let's just say sleeping in a car isn't very productive.

I did notice the stark contrast in my travels over the past two weeks between here to Michigan versus Denver. Michigan is exceedingly wet, and the growth of the grass in my back yard is proof it's plenty moist from here into the Ohio Valley. Everything is a verdant green. In contrast, it has quickly dried out in Colorado and the eastern Rockies after a decent amount of moisture for most of the spring. Denver soared to 100 a week ago and hit the 90s for five straight days. Fires have been raging in parts of the Rockies now for a week, and the pattern looks hot and dry there starting tomorrow for a while. Look at the most recent Drought Monitor from last week:

There remains plenty of moisture from the eastern Plains and Mississippi Valley on east, but there will be a break in that moist pattern after today. The feature bring clouds, rain and some thunderstorms over the Appalachians into the East will move off the coast tonight. Tomorrow will not only be a much drier day from the Ohio and Tennessee valleys into the mid-Atlantic and New England, but the humidity will be much lower, and the air mass itself will physically be cooler. Look at the projected temperature anomalies for tomorrow off the latest GFS ensemble package:

The Great Lakes to the Northeast won't be the only place dealing with cool weather as we wrap up spring. The West will be dealing with an upper-level low rolling through the Northwest, dramatically lowering the heights and pushing the jet stream well to the south for so late in the season. Much of Washington and Oregon will have to contend with showers, even a few thunderstorms, and those will be more of an issue tomorrow across parts of Idaho. By the weekend, though, the heights will rebound, and warming will return to the West.

And what timing! The Summer Solstice is this Friday at 1:04 a.m. EDT. The evidence is mounting that the heat you'll see the rest of the week over the eastern Rockies and Plains will steadily expand eastward with time. In fact, Chicago looks to return to the 90s this weekend, and it is likely to reach the 90- to 95-degree range early next week along much of the I-95 corridor Monday and Tuesday. With that heat there will undoubtedly be a fair degree of humidity, which should translate into some typical summer time thunderstorms late this weekend and early next week to keep the East relatively moist going forward.

The sad part about it all for me? The days start getting shorter this weekend.

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