It’s late July, we expect hot weather, and we are certainly getting it. We’ll be back up into the mid 90s for our Thursday here across the Tennessee Valley. Expect mostly sunny to partly cloudy skies again, but a few isolated and very spotty afternoon and early evening thunderstorms are possible. With a bit more of an easterly component to the wind, dewpoints may ease down a couple of degrees, and even that very subtle change in those dewpoint values will allow our heat index values this afternoon to remain below 105 for most locations. It’s still plenty hot though. Make no mistake about it! As we go into tonight, any storm from the afternoon will fade away with the loss of daytime heating, and then we’re mostly clear with overnight lows in the low to mid 70s for the area.
Rain chances around here will stay pretty isolated and spotty for the next 7 days, as deeper tropical moisture will remain off to our south. Highs for Friday and the weekend will ease back into the lower 90s. That will be short-lived though, as the upper-level heat ridge begins to strength and reassert itself going into the first half of next week. That will have daytime highs climbing back into the mid and upper 90s, especially by next Tuesday and Wednesday. Some folks in north Alabama and northeast Mississippi might may a run at the 99-102 range for daytime highs those two days especially. With dewpoints well into the mid 70s at that time, that will drive heat index values closer to 110 areawide by that time, and a few of the warmer spots may exceed 110 for heat index values. The good news is that we are seeing increasing signals that the heat ridge begins to break down and weaken as we head toward the end of next week and into next weekend.
