It’s been cold and wet in the Northern Rockies with subfreezing wind chill and snow while further east into the Dakotas and Minnesota it’s been stormy with damaging tornadoes, large hail and flooding rains. To the south it’s all about the heat and humidity but by this time next week, most of the US may be talking about some very hot weather.

All major models have the same idea for next week with the expansion of a high pressure dome which pretty much puts a hot lid of sinking air over much of the Lower 48 reminiscent of 2006 and most recently, 2012.

The land is looking more favourable to support a large and powerful upper level ridge with heatwave conditions beneath. Drought conditions have expanded from interior Southeast and Northeast westward into the Plains and for the Southeast and Northeast itself, it’s worsened.

FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Mark McKay ‏@mckayWSB

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

The pattern change is coming as troughs lift north.

The models continue to show coast to coast heatwave conditions in the 6-10 day.

GFS at 168 hours shows an expansive 594dm high

ECMWF out at 230 hours has a monster 600dm high centred over Iowa

CFSv2 reflects the coast to coast ridge in it’s 6-10 day.

I’m taking Wednesday off as I’m attending a funeral but will have a full update Thursday!

See this morning’s video.

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