The Last Heat Wave of the Summer and Earl Keeps Getting Closer and Closer

Well, my string of 3 day weekend is over and I am sad. Nothing but work and school in the future for me. Yuck! The good news for most of you though is that you have one more week of summer left, with Labor Day weekend coming up. It will also feel like summer, most likely our last heat wave until next summer.

Our current surface map shows a STRONG high pressure ridge taking hold over the whole eastern half of the country. This high pressure is not going to want to move an inch from now until Thursday. What that means for us is hot temps (low 90's), sunny days with few if any clouds and low humidity. High temperatures should reach 90 or above each day of the week through Thursday, making this an official heat wave. Humidity will be nowhere near levels that it has been this summer so expect a dry but still hot heat.

Now lets talk about Earl. All summer long, we have been waiting for the tropics to heat up and now we are in the thick of it. Several tropical waves are being fed off the African coast the last two weeks and all of them have hit favorable conditions for Hurricane development. Danielle was strong, but was pushed out to sea. Earl is becoming very strong as well, sitting just north of the US Virgin Islands as we speak.

Right now, all models have Earl tracking close to the coast, but eventually going out to sea. This consensus is changing however with each model run. Earl looks to be running into a possible "doomsday" scenario for those of us on the east coast.

With our strong high pressure cemented over the east coast, another strong sub tropical high pressure system will set up over the middle Atlantic, essentially wedging Earl in the middle and allowing him to very likely ride up the coast as a strong category 3 or 4 storm as these latest model ensembles and forecast track maps show.


Nothing is written in stone just yet, but each model run is consistently bringing the storm further west and with sea surface temps running above normal all summer, it is becoming more and more likely that a strong storm will be affecting Southern New England from Friday into Saturday. This is no exaggeration. I would keep an eye on updates all week.