You may have already started to feel the increased humidity across the Sauk Valley as early as this morning. Our brief weak thunderstorm last evening only added insult to injury as what little moisture it did manage to lay down in the form of rain has only added to the moisture levels here at the surface.
We’ll really start to feel the heat by this afternoon as temperatures are expected to climb up to 90 for our daytime high. Heat index values should hover in the upper 90s to near 100 degrees. An excessive heat watch and heat advisories have been issued for areas to our south.
There is a very small chance of a pop up thunderstorm this afternoon, however it does appear most areas will be dry as we await better storm chances later this evening. A few of those storms could be on the stronger side with damaging winds the biggest threat along with heavy rainfall. Most of these will arrive after 10pm or so if they can hold together. The confidence remains low on who will see an organized complex of storms overnight. Right now a slight risk is in place across our area for severe weather probabilities with an enhanced risk just to the north. We’ll continue to monitor the severe threat throughout the afternoon and provide more updates if necessary.
We’ve had one good string of 90 degree days so far this year, those being back in early June. Overall we have a ways to go towards making our average number of 90 degree days this year. So far we’ve only see 7 of those days feature temperatures of 90 degrees or better. We may add up to 4 more of those this week putting our total at 11. That’s halfway there! We still have the rest of July, August and September to go so we could still easily hit that average. Time will tell!
The next three days will be just plain awful to be outside. Evenings won’t be much better with plenty of humidity around. The only relief will be in the form of showers and thunderstorms that will graze the area from time to time. No cooler air in sight until we reach early next week.
