Nation to See Hot, Dry Weather Next Two Weeks
I guess one of the advantages (if you can call it that) of living in the deep South is that Atlantans are used to high temperatures in the summer. As you can see from the map below, the next two weeks are likely to bring some of the warmest temperatures of the year to much of the country, especially in the upper Midwest and Plains states, where it’s expected to be ten degrees warmer than normal.
For the week of the 17th in Des Moines, Iowa, for example, daytime highs are expected to be in the mid 90s, and lows should be in the mid 70s. Now, that’s about what you would expect in Georgia in mid-July, but remember that many of the homes and businesses in that area don’t have air conditioning.
In addition to the temperature extremes, the increasing effect of drought conditions in the plains states is making the summer of 2006 look like something from the dust bowl period of the 1930s. The weather service updated the seasonal drought outlook this week to show the increased possibility of drought development in the Dakotas, as seen below:
Long range forecasts indicate an above normal chance of dry weather for much of the nation’s midsection for the next two weeks. In fact, the only area that’s really expecting above normal rainfall is the already too wet northeast. The other thing to note about the new drought outlook is that the weather service is continuing to predict improving conditions here in Georgia.
Locally, the rain expected for earlier this week didn’t do too much to help Gwinnett County, as it stayed primarily to the north and west. Only about 1/3 of an inch fell in Lawrenceville, and most of that was early in the evening of July 4th. The dry, cooler than normal weather that followed the front will continue through the early part of the week, and then we’ll be back to typical summer weather, with a chance of thunderstorms each day somewhere in the area.
This follows a pattern we’ve seen over the last few months, where the early part of the month is cool and dry, and the later part of the month is warmer and more humid. It will be interesting to see if the same pattern holds up for August.
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