WEATHER
A few showers and storms bubbled up in the mid-afternoon heat and humidity, but those will settle down quickly this evening, as shown by the HRRR model’s radar simulation:
That leaves us with warm and muggy conditions the rest of the night — temperatures will only drop to the low to mid 70s by early Thursday morning:
Then we warm right back up to the mid 90s by Thursday afternoon…
…with the heat index near or over 100° again:
Apply the usual mid-summer common sense — stay hydrated, find some A/C or at least some shade if you’re going to be outside for a while, and adjust your pace so you don’t over-exert yourself. And don’t count on much relief from Mother Nature — Thursday will bring just a slight chance of an isolated storm, mostly east of I-65. The RPM model looks like it has a decent handle on that pattern:
We’ll keep the 10-20% rain chances in the forecast Friday and Saturday, with temperatures remaining very hot, and heat indices even hotter. Friday’s record high temperature is exactly 100° — that’s really the only day we’ll be close to record territory:
A better chance of thunderstorms will finally crack the heat wave on Sunday, with those storms potentially lingering into the beginning of next week as well. It’s way too soon to talk about any severe thunderstorm potential on Sunday — this time of year, the odds don’t favor any organized severe weather, but we’ll keep an eye on it just in case.
LINKS
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- A new study says the Amazon rain forest triggers its own rainy season using water vapor from plant leaves.
- 46 Republicans have joined Democrats in backing a military study on climate change. (The Secretary of Defense treats it as a very serious issue already.)
- Climatologists use ice cores to figure out what the Earth’s atmosphere was like thousands of years ago, but ice cores can also illustrate changes to European society caused by the Black Death.
- It took the Apollo 11 astronauts three days to get to the Moon. What did they do on the trip?
- Astronomers now say that Earth-sized planets around red dwarf stars are unlikely to have much of an atmosphere.
- Vegetarian and vegan diets aren’t necessarily more healthy.
- Even more good news: mac-n-cheese probably isn’t more toxic than other foods.
- Sorry, but artificial sweeteners won’t help you lose weight.
- Why do human beings speak so many languages?
- Using animals’ body mass and method of motion, scientists can predict the maximum speed of creatures…both alive and extinct.
- The “Game of Thrones” body count is barbarically realistic.