Dog Day Afternoon Ahead

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The dog days are rolling along… featuring the usual mix of heat, high humidity, and thunderstorms. It is a no brainer to say the weather will be “hot and humid with a few spots getting an afternoon storm” through all of July and August; the hard part is determining the placement and coverage of those storms, and the severity of the heat. Day to day changes tend to be subtle, and all the result of small scale features our fancy computer models simply don’t know about.

THE HEAT: We should rise into the mid 90s today and tomorrow… I don’t see how in the world we can get into the triple digit range. I have learned over the long years of sitting in this chair that you rarely see triple digit heat here with green grass and good soil moisture. Seems like many of the news outlets get all excited every time we get in the mid 90s and begin running their heat tips: go into an air conditioned building, drink water, etc. Duh! Most of us have dealt with heat like this for a long long time, we know all about air conditioning and drinking cold water. The heat will back off Wednesday, and especially Thursday as the coverage of clouds and storms will be increasing.

THE STORMS: Always a chance of a storm on a hot summer afternoon; the models don’t show much today and tomorrow, but we will sure have to keep an eye on that MCS this morning over Iowa and Missouri; it will be propagating down this way by the afternoon hours. Thursday seems to be the day with the best potential for the most numerous storms with a short wave rolling through here.

The GFS tries to dry us out a bit by Friday and the weekend, but we won’t feel comfortable with that idea until later in the week.

TROPICS: As you can see from Tim Coleman’s post below this one, the 00Z NAM brings a tropical storm into the Panama City/Apalachicola area Thursday, which seems a little far fetched at this point. And, the GFS want to develop something in that same general area this weekend. Seems like a home grown system like that is the main hope for any tropical developing in coming days as the rest of the Atlantic basin is very quiet for now.

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I am headed up to Blount County this morning… I will be speaking to a summer group at First Baptist Church in Oneonta. Look for the next Weather Xtreme video here by 3:30 or so this afternoon. Enjoy the day!

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