We’re now into summer’s second half and there appears to be some pretty significant flips on the way.

Since the heavy rains have eased in the last couple of weeks across Texas and Oklahoma and with very high evaporation rates at this time of year, soils are drying out and by doing so, along with the typical upper air pattern you would expect, surface temperatures are beginning to go above normal in Southern Plains.

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

The latest ECMWF weeklies (something I don’t show very often) is showing a drier and warmer next couple of weeks across the Southern Tier while it’s a cooler, wetter pattern across the Northern Tier. The building of the hot dome over Texas allows a near textbook summer ‘ring of fire’ with monsoon rains prevalent over the Desert Southwest.

ECMWF week 1-2 temp anomalies.

Week 1-2 precip anomalies.

Mind the 10 day QPF rain totals I put up yesterday. Look at Texas!

If you go back and look at my US summer forecast released back on April 1, I do state the possibility of a drier and warmer 2nd half to summer over the South. This happened by in the summer of 1998 which happened to be my first ever visit to the US. Houston, TX and most days were in the 98-102 range. Highs didn’t get below 78-81.

As for the upcoming 72 hour period. The hottest and most humid air mass of the summer is pushing north bringing Chicago it’s 2nd 90+ of 2015, however just as the heat and humidity build, the next in a series of fronts is already dropping into the N Plains and by Monday, the heat and humidity is largely confined to the South.

The ECMWF surface shows the southeastward advance of the front tomorrow afternoon/evening through Monday which cleans out the atmosphere, replacing it yet again by fresh Canadian air.

Check out the temperature decrease through the weekend. Heat shall remain strong across the South and particularly the Southeast where it’s dry.

I initially believed Chicago would see it’s first back to back weekend 90s since August 2012 but that as of now doesn’t look likely as storms cross the region Saturday night, restricting highs to the 80s Sunday.

Will have more tomorrow…

Check out today’s video for the discussion.

[/s2If][s2If current_user_cannot(access_s2member_level1)][magicactionbox id=”18716″][/s2If]