ORLANDO, Fla. – Excessive heat warnings are up across a majority of the state.
The same stubborn pattern we’d talked about back in the latter half of MAY...has stuck around. A dominating ridge of high pressure continues to crank up the thermostat for not only Central Florida, but much of the eastern half of the nation.
There’s a bit of an ending in sight – I caution just a bit. There’s also a twist I want to touch on with you so read to the end if you could, kindly!
We have a fancy weather name for what’s occurring over the eastern U.S., and if you’ve kept up with our routine articles out of News 6 you’re probably familiar. It’s called the Pacific North American Oscillation – the PNA for short.
We’ve been sitting beneath a negative PNA for an extended length of time, since about mid-to-late May. Believe it or not this same sort of pattern has oscillated back and forth over our area.
If you recall, we had some pretty significant dry spells during May and hefty portions of June. That’s all thanks to this bowling ball of ridging that continues to bully its way across the east.
While this pattern is expected to break down it comes with a few caveats.
First and foremost, the heat won’t entirely be going away. We’re deep into the summer months here in the Northern Hemisphere, so we’ll be getting a lot more sunlight than we did back in May and even early June. Sure, we’re on approach for the fall, that’s going to take its time to work in for us.
Also, as the next front/trough combo from up north comes in, Climate Prediction Center and our global models return to the thinking of we could see some homegrown tropical activity off the southeast/Mid-Atlantic coast.
Our rain chances will graciously go up, so it’s a win for us here in the Sunshine State.
Finally, as our ridge breaks down and kicks back towards the west, this opens up a favorable corridor for a couple of approaching tropical waves originating from the deep tropics.
We had a fairly active wave splash down off the coast of Africa yesterday, which models are continuing to go back and forth on. Regardless of development, I do believe down the road we could receive some extra moisture from it.
A second wave forecast to come off Africa, currently traversing the continent as we speak, has a bit of a better environment in front of it to do a little more than simply sling showers and storms across the ocean.
I won’t get too into the weeds with you just yet, as we are still quite a ways away. But the key takeaway here is – the heat is sticking around, with some rainy relief anticipated. We’re about to walk through the front door of August which means we will begin the uphill climb towards peak hurricane season.
Experts in tropical meteorology all seem to agree, the Atlantic environment for tropical activity will start to improve as the calendar starts ticking after August 1.