Hotter Days Ahead as Tropics Begin to Wake Up

The heat almost literally went from 0 to 100 this afternoon. We'd been tracking an abrupt swap to a drier and warmer pattern for the last few days.

Today, we fully realized the jump in air temperatures. Some spots were flirting with the upper 90s. Feels like temps were in the triple digits, even the triple-digit teens from about the lunch hour through to 4-5 pm.

With such a scarcity of rainfall, the beneficial cooling trend we've gotten used to as we around the hump of the warmest part of the day is starting to go away. Less of us will see rain for the rest of the night today, and more so Tuesday into Wednesday. 

High pressure to our north and east is starting to work in directly overhead. This is key, because as this dome of sinking air comes in, it opens up a weakness in the wind flow across the greater Atlantic. We'll touch on why that's important further into the discussion, but that plays into our weather by further drying us out and trying to increase our afternoon high's even further. Into Wednesday and Thursday, our next batch of Saharan air, albeit a late season push, will arrive.

These two will actually couple up over the state, and further reinforce this hot and dry period. It won't be until Friday and Saturday really where an extra dose of moisture could sweep in, and douse the heat with some much-needed afternoon showers. 

Now, to the tropics! At this point, I'd imagine you've heard some rumblings about the Atlantic getting active. While it's doing it's best to come back to life, only one area of interest stands out from the others.

Right now National Hurricane Center has a fairly robust tropical wave at a 60% chance of formation inside the next seven days. It already has "the look", and should continue westward through this favorable corridor before trying to lift north as it further organizes.

The overarching takeaway here; we should see it follow a very similar path as much of the Atlantic storms performed last season curving away from any major landmass.

The WINK Weather Authority will keep a very close eye on it, as well as what could be brewing back behind our current tropical troublemaker.