Northeast to ride temperature roller coaster into next week
While many reached for long sleeves and jackets from Tuesday to Thursday in the Northeast with temperatures up to 20 degrees below normal, shorts and swimming weather will return this weekend to next week.
Experts say heat is impacting education in many schools. Some districts are turning to green playgrounds and others need millions to invest in air conditioning.
A warming trend will begin late this week and may end with a summer heat surge in some areas of the Northeast next week, AccuWeather meteorologists say.
High pressure that followed a jet stream storm has mostly been responsible for the refreshing but unseasonably cool conditions with low humidity from the Great Lakes to the coastal areas of the Northeast and even into much of the interior southeastern United States.
Many people have been waking up to chilly mornings, with some areas as much as 20 degrees lower than the seasonal average for this time of year in the coolest spots on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Widespread low temperatures were in the 40s and 50s over the region. Temperatures even bottomed out near 60 around the Chesapeake Bay.
However, there is plenty of good news for summer weather fans.
"Temperatures will gradually ratchet up through the weekend," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tom Kines said, "But humidity levels will recover at a slower pace."
By the weekend, temperatures should be back close to the historical average from the mid-Atlantic to the central Appalachians, with highs ranging from near the 80-degree mark over the northern tier to the middle to upper 80s around the Chesapeake Bay. Some cool air will still linger in eastern New England, however.
Despite the drier pattern, the setup will become conducive to late-night and early-morning valley fog later this week and this weekend as nighttime winds will be light, the sky will be clear, and a gradual uptick in moisture will occur.
"Over the weekend, humidity levels will probably be back up to typical late-August levels but not to the magnitude portions of the midsummer delivered," Kines said.
Farther to the west, extreme heat will continue to build and expand northward over the Great Plains and Midwest this weekend to next week.
"At some point, during the early to middle part of next week, some of that heat with high humidity will spike in the Northeast," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Dombek said.
Areas most likely to have highs in the 90s for a couple of days will be from southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey southwestward through Virginia and West Virginia, Dombek explained. There may be a little more resistance to the big heat surging back in New England and into upstate New York. Highs in the 80s will be more common in these Northeastern locations.
"That heat surge will tend to occur ahead of another strong push of cool air that will invade the Midwest by the middle of next week with eyes for the Northeast late next week or during the Labor Day weekend," Dombek said.
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