Finally and for the first time this year, we’re talking real heat over the West and particularly the Desert. As stated for a few days now, we have a 976dm ridge, strongest yet, building all the way north to Oregon and Idaho with the 982 height line pushing as far north as Las Vegas. As a result, the first 90s will occur in Vegas while Phoenix should top 100.

The extreme drought covering much of California and severe drought covering a large swath of the West will certainly encourage the surface warming not just this week but throughout the spring and summer ahead.

SEE TODAY’S VIDEO!

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This warmth should produce readings of 104 to 108 midweek in some favoured low desert hot spots such as Needles and Death Valley, CA. This powerful ridge will push 80s potentially as far north as Salt Lake City and Denver and as the week progresses, will shift east into the Plains and to a less extreme way, across the OH/TN Valley and East.

Check out these forecast highs according to weather.com.

Tue

Wed

Thu

In response this powerful ridge, we’ve a significant trough dropping all the way to the Gulf Coast which has been helping support 4-8, locally 10 inch 24-hour rains across the South and the severe weather that’s currently impacting the Carolinas.

The heaviest rains this evening into tomorrow is focusing on the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

QPF through the next 48 hours.

Focus of heaviest rains over the next 7 days shifts back to the MS Valley.

Here’s the ECMWF 500mb charts showing the ridge expanding east and the upper pattern flattening out. This drives the Western heat right across the country, easing in intensity as is spreads east.

24 hrs

That’s quite the trough into the east in response to the ridge further west!

70s reach Washington DC by Thursday and we could well see near 70 in NYC by weeks end.

Check out the much flatter upper pattern by Thursday.

Is this the start of spring from the Plains on east, finally?

Not so fast!

Check out the CPC 6-10 day temps

8-14

Sure the warmth holds over the drought stricken West but there’s solid guidance in the models that a fairly significant mid-April cold shot drives into Texas early next week.

A system forms and sweeps up through the GL and as it does so, forces a cold trough south on it’s backside.

Here’s the ECMWF for next Monday (168 hrs)

180 hrs (Tue)

5,000ft temps for same period.

While these mid spring cold shots come and go fast, this could be a problem considering that temps will be widely in the upper 80s and low 90s across North Texas/Oklahoma which may be followed by a freeze.

GFS ensembles show temps 15-20 above normal over the Desert Southwest through the next 7 days, warmer than normal for much of the country.

The ensemble shows the cooling in week 2 from the Plains to East Coast.

It remains at or below normal even out to day 9-16.

The West unsurprisingly stays well above normal throughout.

More including video tomorrow.

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