I’ve had in mind when I’m going to be chatting with Corey Davis from the North Carolina Climate Office this week, that we were going to be talking about heat, and we have had plenty of it with a brief reprieve, though, a couple of days ago. We’ll talk about that. But it’s been pretty steamy out there, Corey.
“Yeah, Mike, as usual, I’ll save you my bad singing. But I think it was Glenn Frey from the Eagles, who said, ‘the heat is on.’ It definitely has been over the past week. You know, we talked last week about how it was kind of a slower start to the summer because we had had so many of those cloudy and rainy days in early June. Well, finally, we have switched out of that cloudy pattern into this sunny and hot pattern, mainly because we’ve had high pressure sitting right over us here in the Carolinas. That’s like throwing more blankets on top of us again. It makes for that clear, sunny weather, not many clouds, not a whole lot of rain, although we have had a little bit of that a couple days ago. And then those increasing temperatures we saw back-to-back 100-degree days in Raleigh, back on Monday and Tuesday, also saw the first 100 degree day of the year in Columbia, South Carolina. And looking at some of the areas where we’ve had that heat, even up in South Boston, Virginia, they made it to the 100-degree mark back on Wednesday. So this heat has not discriminated: it has been hot, at least in the 90s, and in some cases, in the hundreds, everywhere across the Carolinas.”
Speaking of Wednesday, on Wednesday evening I stepped outside, and I felt this little breeze. I was like, “Oh, oh, that actually feels good.” What was happening then?
“Wednesday was such an interesting weather day. First off, the forecast, if you go back week or a week or so ago, they were showing that heat starting to back off by Wednesday instead, that ended up being the hottest day of the week in some areas, but we started especially with warm overnight lows. On Wednesday morning. It only dropped down to 80 degrees at Raleigh, which would have tied the all-time record there. It looked like he was setting up as just a plain hot day, and it was. It still made the upper 90s there. But we did have some more showers and thunderstorms popping up on Wednesday afternoon, not the sort of thing that we had seen during these other days during this heat wave, and then with some of those showers in the air that gave a nice little cool off. And actually, in Raleigh, we saw a brief drop down below the 80-degree mark on Wednesday night. Also saw some of those nice relieving winds like you mentioned, at least stir up the air a little bit. So definitely, literally, a night and day difference from Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon on into the evening hours.”
That was pretty short lived, though, and back into this pattern, which looks like it’s going to be with us for a while. We’ll talk about the forecast in just a minute, but let’s talk about the impacts on agriculture here. And you know, one of the things that I know that corn growers look at are those overnight temperatures, because they look for that cooling at night. They’re not getting a lot of that.
“That’s right, we mentioned that only made it down to 80 degrees on Wednesday morning in Raleigh. The other days this week we’ve had some record warm low temperatures in places like Greensboro, only dropping into the upper 70s. You’re right. This is important, not just for people that are spending time outside, but also for the plants. They need those cooler overnight temperatures to help them recover, to respire a little bit more, and when it stays that hot all day long, that can create some stress for the crops as well.”
Now let’s turn our attention. We are now into hurricane season. No hurricanes yet, but I think we had our first named storm of the season over the past week. Tell us about that.
“We did. This was sort of the storm that if you blinked, you might have missed it, because it was only a named storm for about 12 hours. Back on Tuesday, it formed pretty far off to the east, even east of Bermuda in the central Atlantic. It did become Tropical Storm Andrea for just those few hours. The unusual thing about this storm was how far north it formed. It was basically the same latitude as Norfolk, Virginia. So that gives you an idea about how far out there it really was. It’s not the sort of area where we usually see storms forming either this early in the season or altogether in the Atlantic, but it just goes to show how warm the water has been across the Atlantic and also how favorable some of the atmospheric conditions are at the moment. So again, even though this was a short-lived storm, no impacts on land, it is that reminder that we are in hurricane season, and there’s certainly going to be more where that came from.”
Speaking of that, is there any activity out there at the moment that we need to be concerned about?
“So there’s nothing right now that the hurricane center is expecting to develop over the next seven days. Looking ahead to the end of next week, I’ve seen some of the forecast models that are showing we might have a weak front that starts sagging southward across the southeastern US. It’s possible, if that front were to stall out, say, over the northern Gulf or off our coast, we could see a storm develop from that. Now, that is a very common way for storms to form at this time of the year, it’s over the regions where the waters are warmest, and if it sits there long enough, you can have it spin up and get tropical characteristics. So again, heading into early July, that’s maybe the next window for development. Still worth noting that it is early in the season, less than a month into the hurricane season. Usually we don’t see a lot of activity this early on.”
Speaking of activity over the next seven days, let’s take a look at the forecast, and from what I’ve seen, just glancing at it, I see a lot of numbers beginning with nine over the next few days.
“That’s right, and it’s better than numbers beginning with a one or a one zero. That’s the one positive we can say. The main reason for that change is that this high pressure that’s been sitting over us is finally starting to slide off to the east, off our coastline, number one, that will open up the doors for some more moisture coming in from the south. That will increase the cloud cover a little bit more. It’ll also increase those chances of afternoon showers and thunderstorms. And it’s like peeling a couple of those blankets off of the top of us. So it won’t be quite as hot, but it’s still will be pretty hot on through the weekend, mostly low to mid 90s, and then it looks like early next week, probably low 90s for the most part. So not really getting a break from the heat, but at least getting a break from some of those extremes like we’ve had over the past few days.”