New England Stays Cool For Now, But Some Adjustments Coming

For what it's worth, NOAA's Climate Prediction 
Center brings likely above normal temperatures
to New England around July 16-22 after 
what has been a relatively cool-ish summer so far.

 We've got another cool weekend going, with temperatures this bright Saturday running about 10 degrees cooler than "normal" for this time of year.

It got down to at least 37 degrees this morning in Saranac Lake, New York, and 43 degrees in the Northeast Kingdom hamlet of Gallup Mills. Today's highs will only make it to the low 70s for most of us. Bright sunshine will take any edge off the chill, for those sensitive to cool July weather.  

We'll continue to more or less avoid hot weather, but slow adjustments are coming that might, maybe give us a somewhat hotter, more humid second half of July. 

A persistent "heat dome" of high pressure has kept things hot across most of nation except the Northwest and Northeast, which have been outside this area of high pressure. The heat dome has been sloshing back and forth a little, intensifying the heat for awhile in say, parts of the Rockies and High Plains, then shifting it back again toward the Midwest and South. Rinse and repeat.

Since this hot high pressure in the atmosphere has never made it to the East Coast, we've been left with a mostly coolish flow of air from the northwest as we sit north and east of the hot air core.

This state of affairs will continue, but as I said, subtle changes are coming.  I don't see this dome of hot air establishing itself over us anytime soon.  But there are signs that we will be close enough to that terrible air to change our weather for the second half of the month. A little. 

The usual caveats apply.  Long range forecasts are iffy.  The computer models aren't really in agreement with everything, either. They differ on where the center of the heat will be, the orientation of the flow of air north and east of this heat dome, and how strong that heat will be.

Right now, what I'm giving you isn't much more than a parlor game for weather geeks. But it will still be interesting how this plays out for the second half of July. 

The consensus seems to be that the heat dome in the country's middle will intensify even more as we head into later next week and perhaps the week after. If worst case scenarios come true, there could be some all time record highs set somewhere in the Midwest, and perhaps South. 

I have to wonder with the heat in central North America getting more expansive, could it be easier for us in Vermont to get some squirts of hot, humid air between the parade of cold fronts coming down from Canada?

And if that happens, will there be more showers and possibly severe storms? After all, rough storminess almost always rides along the northern edges of these terrible heat domes. We don't know for sure, as we can't anticipate how clusters of storms will behave much more than two or three days out. 

We do know that after our cool weekend, Monday will turn increasingly warm and humid. Nothing extreme, but you'll feel it, compared to this weekend. Another cold front Tuesday could trigger showers and storms. It's possible, but certainly no slam dunk, that a few storms Tuesday could get strong.  It depends on how winds, clouds and instability develop. We'll get a better handle on this by Monday. 

The northwest flow brings in cooler air for the middle of next week, but with another asterisk. High pressure is also intensifying in the western Atlantic, as it often does this time of year. That tends to slow the cold fronts coming down from Canada and also tries to deflect them away from us a bit. 

Though we won't get much rain, the cold front and trough of low pressure will be slow to leave after Tuesday, leaving us with a risk of showers Wednesday and to a lesser extent Thursday.

The air coming in after Tuesday is on the cool side for this time of year, but as cool as we're getting today. So it will be relatively close to normal next week.

For what it's worth, the American model in particular has us turning warmer and more humid starting about a week from now and then continuing for about a week. It also depicts several batches of showers and storms coming through during that period. 

Overall, the European model doesn't seem to keep us quite as consistently warm and humid in about a week, and continues our familiar northwest flow.  That would keep us cooler and drier, relatively speaking. Both models agree we in New England won't get into the super hot air further to our west. We shall see! 

If it does warm up and get more humid, there's no way to know how long that might last. The persistent "heat dome" over the United States this summer could always drift toward the west again, re-establishing our nice, cool summer regime.