The Grinding Heat Eases Off

I'm back...spent about a week in the Phoenix area visiting my mom and playing a lot of golf, well mainly playing a lot of golf. Overall about 6 rounds in 5 days...each day was about 100-105 with dewpoints in the 40s and 50s...barely sweated at all. On Monday AM, after some nice t/storm activity Sunday night, it was rather thick there with dewpoints near 70 or so. It lasted for about 6 hours before the desert sun started to dry things out again. Didn't see any haboobs, but the folks there are still buzzing about them. As a matter of fact there was a big writeup in the Sunday paper about the phenomena. Anyway I'm back which means it's time to start the weather blogs again.

In my absence I see I didn't miss much...l00 degree heat has become common around these parts and even when we get a "break", perhaps like tomorrow and Saturday, we still expect 90s in the region to be the norm. Hopefully we'll take off about 5-10 degrees compared to the last several days. Over this weekend I'll be doing some comparison stats for you showing how this summer is comparing to last summer. We were really in the heart of the summer heat last year at about this time and it continued throughout the month of August before finally breaking. We finished last August some 4.6 degrees above normal and it appears that this August will certainly start out rather toasty as another run of 100+ heat appears to be shaping up.

This again is being generated by our semipermanent dome of heat that is recycling again through the middle part of the country. This will once again intensify across the midwest early next week and you can clearly see the effects on the temperatures around 5000' or so...

Now here is the same map for later int he week...there is a suggestion that there could be another weak front trying to slide our way...this is very iffy at this point...

So when things get this slow, I'm always looking to talk about something else...and today we'll tackle the tropics where Tropical Storm Don, which formed yesterday has had a rough go of things...first take a look at the latest satellite picture...

It's basically a ball of convection with winds near the center at close to 45 mph. There should be some intensifying as the storm is over the open waters of the very warm Gulf Of Mexico and the folks @ TPC suggest the potential for 60 MPH winds. The storm is also undergoing some shear, which is like poison to a tropical system. While not tremendous it may be enough to keep the intensification below hurricane status. As far as where Don should end up...latest forecasts have the storm near or just north of Corpus Christi sometime early Saturday morning. This actually may be a good thing down there, as is often the case in drought situations, and they really need the rainfall, these things sometimes will ease with tropical rainfall. I think I read the other day that this part of Texas needed some 15-20" of rainfall to catch up. Systems like Don can help that IF they slow down, which Don probably won't do. Can't imagine how much, if any, moisture will head this way...the dome of heat will deflect the moisture well to the south of here and then take it into far W TX or Southern NM...so at this point it doesn't look that promising.


Also of note is the record rainfall that has fallen in Chicago, several days ago, and also in Dubuque, IA yesterday with some 7.47"...very impressive. It would not be unusual that when this heat finally breaks here that some big t/storm complex will be generated...

Today is the 14th straight day @ KCI and 15th straight day @ the downtown airport that we've busted through 90 or higher...

Have a great day and it's nice to be back!

Joe