While temperatures peg back across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic following yet another 100-degree day from DC to New York yesterday, the core of the heat shifts back west and will punish the very heart of the drought region.

From this afternoon through to early next week, expect highs well into the 100s with some, perhaps many from Dallas, TX to Minot, ND excedding 105 to 110. The extremely arid soils and the shear power of this historic drought is actually helping position the core of the upper level ridge directly overhead, forcing heights to rocket through the roof. These dusty soils are drying out the atmosphere and so the powerful July sun needs little effort in heating the ground and the air above to scalding levels. Normally, a large percentage of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation, the rest into heating the air but when there’s such dry ground, this has direct feedback to the atmosphere, forces minimal moisture in the atmosphere and so there’s much less evaporation.

I have the upper charts included below for the next several days. Note the strongest heights focused directly over Kansas. The thing is, air masses like these tend to heat and heat further as they sit stagnant over a given area for perhaps 10 days at a time and sadly I can’t see this thing shifting for perhaps as long as that.

The good thing for Easterners is it doesn’t look as though the blowtorch will return anytime over the next week with more troughiness set to dominate, bringing cooling air masses with lower humidity down from Canada.

Note the heat is on for much of the West as well as the Plains.

It’s this setup which may see some incredible highs and record warm nights too so keep following the numbers, especially from Kansas to the North Dakota-Canada line over the next 7 days. May see highs climb into the mid-110s for a few days.

Tags: plains heat, record drought, record heatwave, us weather