Lead Forecaster Daniel Crawley
It’s been a toasty past three days across the Southeast as a mid-June heatwave has locked in. The good news is that we see subtle signs of the heat wave relaxing but it will take a couple more days to get there.
Thursday is going to be another hot and humid day across the region but the heights aloft will starting retrograding toward the Mississippi River and by Friday the center of the ridge will be across the Central Plains.
As the ridge shifts back west, the flow aloft will return from the northwest. This will allow thunderstorm boundaries to potentially enter back into the picture. As you can see on the radar loop, shower and thunderstorm activity is possible Thursday afternoon and into Friday.
Temperatures for Thursday afternoon should once again be in the mid to upper 90’s with plenty of sunshine going into the afternoon. The Dewpoints which has been ridiculously high since Monday (Mid 70’s) might be just a tad lower on Thursday (closer to 70). That could shave a couple degrees off the heat index values. 🤞
If we can get some kind of trigger to move in, it will have the opportunity to tap into some highly unstable air across the Carolinas, once again. (CAPE 2000-4000). That could allow storms to be severe. Storm Prediction Center has placed the area under a Marginal Risk (Level 1 of 5)
Increasing northwest flow on Friday could help mix lower Dewpoints further and then by the Father’s Day Weekend we could be looking at much more tolerable weather overall…but we still got a ways to go before getting there.