Intense Heat Sets Up In The South; We In Vermont To Stay Comfortable

Peonies and irises in my St. Albans, Vermont gardens got
another drink of water from overnight thundershowers.
More rain is in the forecast, and hot weather will be
kept out of the region at least through mid-month. 

 A long spell of intense heat is beginning to build in the Southwest and south central parts of the nation, and record highs are beginning to fall.  

Up here in Vermont, a persistent dip in the jet stream will keep protecting us from the heat at least through mid-month. 

Triple digit temperatures extend this week from California to Texas. As the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang summarizes, Death Valley could easily reach 120 degrees.  It's almost always hot in the Southwest this time of year, but this is up there, even for them.

Las Vegas could see record highs of around 108 or 109 degrees in the coming days. The forecast high for Phoenix on Friday is 113 degrees, which would edge out the record high for the date of 111 degrees.

What makes the heat especially dangerous is the overnight lows, or more accurately the lack thereof. Temperatures will stay above 80 degrees across this region at night. Most people have air conditioning, but a few do not. And some people are homeless. 

The lack of any nighttime breaks from the heat can cause heat related illnesses and deaths. 

The "heat dome" looks like it will eventually shift a bit eastward out of the Desert Southwest and then park itself over the southern Plains for an extended stay. 

That means the Southwest will go from record hot to just hot. But the southern Plains will bake day in and day out in near record heat. Recently, drought conditions in the southern Plains were beginning to get better because of frequent, heavy storms over the past couple of weeks.

But this heat dome will shut off the water in this region and once again, they'll dry out. The heat will probably spread into the Southeast as well, raising the prospect of triple digit temperatures from California to the Carolinas. 

The position of this "heat dome" which is basically just a broad, hot area of high pressure, will keep Vermont out of the heat. 

The jet stream, which generally drives weather systems, will head northeastward in the Rockies and up toward Canada, up and over the central U.S. heat dome, then head southeastward into the Great Lakes and Northeast.

That'll block the hot air in the middle of the nation from reaching us. Repeated cold fronts in that northwest flow over us will keep our temperatures more or less near normal at least into the third week of June.

There will be a few cool days and a few warm, humid-ish ones in there, but I'm not seeing anything extreme. 

With the flow from the northwest, it will be hard for any tropical air to make its way toward us, so these repeated cold fronts mostly won't have huge amounts of rain with them. But we'll have chances of rain pretty much every other day if this pattern holds, keep precipitation near normal.

In the short term, tomorrow looks like the wettest and chilliest day for the foreseeable future as a nor'easter of sorts passes through New England. A June version of a nor'easter is a weaker system than what you see in the winter.  So it'll just be rainy and damp.

After that, we fall into that pattern of average weather. 

One caveat: On the periphery of these heat domes something known as a "ring of fire" sets up.  That ring of fire is frequent, sometimes severe storms on the northwestern, northern and northeastern edges of the heat dome. 

During this spell of weather, it's possible that a cold front could time itself correctly, and have the correct atmospherics, to give us a threat of severe thunderstorms.

So far, there's nothing to suggest we'll see anything like that at least through early next week, and likel beyond.