Wednesday 6/29 Update

As expected, a drier air mass finally arrived in our region late yesterday, with dew points this morning ranging from the upper 50's to mid 60's....compared to the oppressive low and mid 70 dew points yesterday morning.  This drier air arrived behind a cold front that has pushed well south of the area, leaving surface high pressure to remain in control of our weather for a few days.  Today, we'll enjoy lots of sunshine....very warm, but less humid, with highs in the upper 80's.  Tonight, another comfortable one, with lows in the lower 60's again.  Here's how things are forecast to look Thursday at 7AM:

 

High pressure over Ohio, and a building upper-level ridge will keep skies mainly sunny for the next several days.  And after a short break from at least the high humidity today, the warm front you see on the map above over eastern KS & OK will bring the return of some serious heat and humidity starting Friday.  Here's a map showing temperatures at the 850 mb level (about 1500 ft high) from today through Friday morning:

As you can probably figure out, those brighter shades of red that spread in from the west by Friday morning indicates building heat as the surface warm front slides through, and as the upper-level ridge strengthens.  Temperatures heading into the weekend will head to the mid 90's Friday-Sunday, with increasing humidity.  Overnight lows will be back closer to 70.  

One change from yesterday's forecast...yesterday's forecast models indicated the upper-ridge breaking down slightly by Sunday/Monday, which would allow a weak cold front to slide farther south and possibly lead to scattered t'storm chances as early as Saturday.  It now looks like the ridge will hold firm until the beginning of next week...which should keep most of the area steamy but mainly dry over the weekend.  However, any time you have heat and humidity, something could bubble up...so we will leave a very small chance of an isolated t'storm in the Sunday/Monday forecast. 

A couple of other points of interest real quick...after a record-breaking amount of rain this spring, the month of June has continued to see rainfall records fall by the wayside.  Jennifer Rukavina posted a blog yesterday with some interesting information about recent heavy rainfall....you can read that here.

Finally, we have our first named tropical storm of the year in the Atlantic.  "Arlene" officially became a tropical storm last night, and could strengthen to near hurricane status before making landfall along the east central coast of Mexico tonight or early tomorrow.  As with many of these tropical systems that move onshore and stall, the biggest issue with this storm will be heavy rainfall (4-8", locally up to 15"), which could lead to deadly mudslides.  For more info on Arlene, click on the Tropical Weather link on the right side of the page...here's the 10AM advisory on Tropical Storm Arlene:

A quick final note...I am off tomorrow, and will be on reporter duty on Friday, so I may not be able to post another update until Saturday.