Forecasters are giving us a 20 to 30 percent chance of seeing some showers sometime on Thursday, Friday or Saturday afternoon. The cloud cover that comes with these little disturbances will keep afternoon temperatures from reaching the triple-digit heights that had been forecast for downtown Baltimore on Friday.

But it will remain hot, and increasingly humid. The forecast high for Friday at BWI-Marshall Airport is now 98 degrees, with Heat Index values reaching 104 degrees. Downtown Baltimore could reach 99 degrees Friday afternoon, with humidity pushing the Heat Index to 106 degrees.

And the 90-degree weather is forecast to continue at least through next Wednesday. On Saturday, the streak will reach 14 days. That will tie the mark for the third-longest stretch of 90-plus weather in Baltimore. If we go another week, to next Saturday, the count will stand at 21 days, equal to the second-longest streak of 90-degree weather on record here, set in 1988.

The streak would have to continue until Aug. 10 to match the all-time record for consecutive 90-degree days, 25, in 1995.

In the meantime, dry conditions have spread across Maryland in the past week. The USDA Drought Monitor map released this morning shows all of Maryland except the western two-thirds of Garrett County - almost 94 percent of the state - rated as at least "abnormally dry." That's up from 86 percent last week.

Severe drought remains limited to Wicomico and slices of Worcester and northern Somerset counties on the Lower Eastern Shore - just 5 percent of the state, and unchanged from last week. But "moderate" drought conditions remain south of Easton on the Eastern Shore, and in the southern portions of Calvert and St. Mary's counties, roughly 18 percent of the state.