Summer returns with a vengeance
Kinda felt like autumn for a few days there, didn't it? Well, that's over. The National Weather Service has issued an Excessive Heat Watch tomorrow in Baltimore and Washington. With the sun coming back out after a long absence, daytime temperatures could top 100 degrees on Saturday. Given the expected high humidities, with breezes off the Chesapeake, the Heat Index readings tomorrow could exceed 110 degrees.
UPDATE: 3:30 p.m.: The National Weather Service has issued a Heat Advisory for 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday for all of Maryland between Frederick County and the Chesapeake Bay, and for the northern portion of the Eastern Shore. Here's more.
Forecasters were calling for a high of 104 degrees in downtown Baltimore. They seem to have backed off a bit from that. Here's the downtown forecast. A high of 104 would be the second-highest temperature of the summer for the city. The hottest was 106 degrees, reached at the Maryland Science Center on Aug. 8. (It was "only" 102 degrees that day at BWI.)
The forecast for the airport calls for a high of 98 degrees. Even that would beat the 97-degree record for the date, set in 1968. (The average high for an Aug. 25 at BWI is 84 degrees. The coolest high was 65 degrees, set in 1940.
The satellite view shows the stubborn cloud cover lingering over much of Maryland. It's beginning to break up. But continues to shield us from the still-strong August sun. And that's been keeping temperatures well below average for this time of year.
But where the clouds scatter, and the frontal system and "cold air damming" east of the mountains that caused it, begin to depart, temperatures will rise. We'll be rid of this marine air, and get back into a flow of warm, humid air from the south and southeast, and we'll cook.
All the big rain, meanwhile, will stay to our north and west. We may get a shower or two, and some could drop a couple of inches locally, but none of the flooding rains we're seeing on TV from Ohio and Minnesota, or the ferocious thunderstorms they got in Chicago.
By Monday, as Baltimore school kids head back to class, we should be looking at highs in the mid-80s.
