Yesterday was hot! We ended up in the low-mid 90s with the heat index in the upper 90s.
It was great if you were at the beach, but it was a bit rough for everywhere else. Our bodies haven’t acclimatized to the high heat yet. Luckily, the high heat and humidity won’t last too much longer. Today will still be pretty warm and muggy, but it won’t be as hot as yesterday. The main reason for this is the extra clouds that have moved into the region.
We’ll have more clouds through the day, but there will be pockets of sunshine. There is a subtle wind-shift off to our west that will move a little closer to us today. Otherwise high pressure is offshore.
The surface winds will be out of the south/southwest at 10-15mph. So we’ll heat up to the upper 80s to near 90 this afternoon. However, it will feel like the low-mid 90s with the heat index. The chance for rain will increase this afternoon. Scattered showers and storms will form in the region. There will be a few heavy downpours as well.
There may be some strong gusty winds in a few of the storms, but there is a higher chance for severe weather to our northwest. The scattered storms will continue into the evening. We could see a few more overnight. Tomorrow, we’ll have quiet weather for a while. There may only be some isolated showers in the region from the mid morning into the early afternoon. However, by the late afternoon a cold front will move towards the region. There will be scattered showers and storms forming ahead of it. This will push south as we go through the evening. Tomorrow high temps will be in the upper 80s to low 90s. Then we’ll cool down nicely on Sunday. High temps will be in the upper 70s. We’ll dry out, and we’ll have partly cloudy skies. It should be very nice out. Then we’ll hold onto the nice weather through early next week. That’s assuming there’s no wild swing to the east with Cristobal.
Cristobal was a tropical depression this morning over the Yucatan Peninsula. Many of the thunderstorms were off to the northeast of the core of the storm.
The system is forecast to move back over the water later today. It is then expected to move north over the open Gulf of Mexico through the weekend. The system will strengthen back into a tropical storm. There is still a low chance that it could become a hurricane before landfall early next week, but most of the models keep it as a tropical storm for now. The trend in the models and the forecast track has been more to the east. So now there is more of a focus towards eastern Louisiana or even coastal Mississippi.
The models have been steadily trending east for the last 2 days.
Even the Euro model has trended east in the last 24 hours. There’s still plenty of time for the forecast to change. So stay tuned for updates. One concern is that the storm will move north along the Mississippi River Valley. There has already been historic flooding in that region. This tropical system could make things much worse. We’ll see. Either way I think it will stay to our west.
Have a good weekend!
Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler