July 15-16

We are in the middle of another streak of heat.  It seems to be en vogue these days to issue heat advisories when the heat index is expected to be around 100 rather than what criteria states, so I'd guess we will have at least many of you covered with advisories for the rest of the work week.  Think of it like in the winter-- a wind chill around -3 is cold!! We should see wind chills a little below zero in the winter. Is it wind chill advisory worthy? (no!)

The more appropriate advisory is for air quality -- which will be likely in the unhealthy range through Friday.  Rain and some wind will help break up the dirty, stagnant air.  We are hot through Saturday, but I still believe we see relief coming from heat and dew points for the second half of the weekend.  It won't last terribly long, but it shouldn't.  This is July, not late September.   We head back to normal temperatures by the middle of next work week, and then hot again by the time we get to a week from this Friday.  We DO look to be cooler and less humid ending July and for the opening of August.  As far as rain and thunderstorm chances go --  Look for isolated chances Thursday during peak heating hours.   I'm still looking at better chances for rain Friday, with potentially areas of moderate to heavy rain and a few severe, wind producing storms for Saturday, but the SPC doesn't agree yet.  More rain/storms are possible from the middle to the end of next week.   WE NEED RAIN.   Since the 4th of July, we have turned overall really dry.  Ideally, we get rain every third of fourth day and that hasn't happened in almost 2 weeks.  Remember this is the time of year where we zap 0.25"-0.30" moisture from the soil every sunny day!