Severe Weather Risks Today & Friday as Heatwave Continues,
Latest on Hurricane Lee
Severe Weather Risks Today & Friday as Heatwave Continues,
Latest on Hurricane Lee
The heatwave over the Eastern US continues for another day and it will be brutal today with high humidity and highs that will reach the low to middle 90s. There will be some upper 90s in hot spots, and we could see some more record highs being set this afternoon. However we do have some changes coming as the upper pattern in the Eastern US shifts a bit and a cold front approaches.
Late this afternoon and into tonight as this cold front draws closer we will see some showers and thunderstorms. An upper trough adds some spice to this as well as dew points in the 70s so the Storm Prediction Center has a slight risk for severe weather covering much of the Northeast and Mid Atlantic from Northern Virginia to Maine. The heavier rain and stronger storms will be inland.
SATELLITE WITH LIGHTNING STRIKES
WEATHER RADAR
In the meantime today try and stay cool and we will watch for the development of thunderstorms which are on the regional radar to the west and southwest. The risk for thunderstorms will last into part of tonight and then it is a soup bowl of humidity, patchy fog. and most lows in the upper 60s to mid and even upper 70s.
Friday will be another day of severe weather risk from Virginia to Maine with the stalled cold front running north south from Upstate NY to the Southern Appalachians. Very warm to hot conditions continue with ridiculous humidity for Friday as highs will be in the upper 80s north to low and middle 90s south. Thunderstorms will develop again during the afternoon and evening.
We are going to be stuck in this pattern through the weekend and into next week as a large ridge builds westward from the Atlantic and this creates a log jam along the East Coast where weather fronts cannot pass through. We will see temperatures trend downward over the weekend mainly due to probably a lot more in the way of clouds and that risk for thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening for both Saturday and Sunday. High both days will be in the 80s and the humidity will continue to be ridiculously high.
The stalled frontal boundary along the East Coast will make a perfect alley way for Hurricane Lee which appears on the GFS model run in the lower right corner by Sunday night and early Monday. That front is forecast to inch closer to the coast and offshore as next week wears on. Weather models overnight showed no real shift westward in the forecast track for Lee, taking it northward between Bermuda and North Carolina and then turning it to the northeast passing offshore late next week.
Since we are still over a week away there is some room for error here, especially given the stalled front along the East Coast and the next round of upper air energy swinging into the Great Lakes. We would like to see more clarity develop on what the upper air pattern will look like next week so for now we leave the door slightly ajar for a more west track, however the odds do indeed favor an offshore storm at this point. Perhaps some nervousness could be justified for Coastal Maine and Nova Scotia for late next week.
In the meantime Hurricane Lee continues to move west northwest across the Tropical Atlantic and forecast to strengthen rapidly today through Friday. Lee will likely become a major hurricane overnight into Friday morning and could reach category 4 or 5 status over the weekend. Fortunately it is forecast to track north of the Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico so other than rough ocean seas, these islands will not see much effect from Lee as it goes by.
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