The weekend is here and it looks pretty good. A storm system which brought widespread rain to the center of the county is going to stay mostly offshore this weekend not bring showers or even a lot of clouds to most areas.

Friday looks good with abundant sunshine. There will be some clouds south of York and in the mountains, but the coastline should be almost completely sunny. It will be relatively cool for the first part of August. As mentioned earlier, there was a storm threatening to bring more clouds this weekend, but presently it appears it will stay so far away it won’t impact our weather much.

The position of the storm this weekend will bring a northeasterly flow of air. When winds come from this direction it keeps the coast cooler this time of year. This means low to mid 70s for high temperatures this weekend at many beaches, but somewhat warmer inland.

The overall upper pattern is such that eventually we are going to see some rain. I think early next week another area of showers and very humid air will ride north on the upper level flow and bring a widespread steady rain to the area for part of Tuesday night into sometime on Wednesday.

Of course this forecast will need to be refined somewhat as we get closer to this date, but it’s looking more likely we’ll see an unsettled period of weather next week.

Still No Prolonged Heat
This summer, like the last one, is looking more and more like we aren’t going to see a prolonged period of heat. We haven’t had any heat waves since the summer of 2013. It’s not impossible we get a heat wave during the second part of August or even September, but the deeper in the final month of summer we go, the less likely it becomes.

As we continue to lose light and the angle of the sun becomes lower and lower the amount of available solar energy decreases. This decrease in incoming ultraviolet light lowers the chances of reaching 90 degrees at all let alone three days in a row which constitutes a heat wave.

The latest 8-14 day outlook from the National Weather Service brings cooler than average air to the Ohio Valley and a forecast of average temperatures for much of New England. In order for average temperatures to occur during that period, we can’t have prolonged heat, thus the reason for my thinking about heat.

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