8/22 – The Chief’s “TS Harold Update” Tuesday Morning Forecast

The nice “cooler” temps yesterday were courtesy of the tropical wave that became TS Harold. The back end of this is exiting stage left for us today. Temps will climb a bit today as dry air will begin to take the place of the departing tropical environment but won’t be too fast to bring Heat Index numbers to the extreme…yet. There will be a marked difference in the heat yesterday and today when compared to Wednesday. The stacked high will move from the mid-Miss River valley to the Texarkana region by Wed which will set this suppressive atmosphere much closer to our area. We will tack on 3 to 5 degrees for high temps Wed and anywhere from 5 to 10 degrees of Heat Index temps Wed when compared to today. This will do exactly what one would think by making this some of the strongest heat so far of the season and dangerous. It will at the very least make things feel miserable and oppressive. The current hazards will remain and the excessive heat watch will likely by changed to a warning later. Rain will be almost non-existent over the next few days.

The stacked high will not move much but moisture currently along the east coast will funnel into the easterlies on the eastern and southern periphery of the high bringing some of this in the form of higher moisture flow to the area by Thursday.

A strong disturbance should begin to become evident over southern Alberta by late Wed. This feature will move into the Great Lakes Friday causing cold front to move out of Canada into the Dakotas Thu and could get far enough south to help enhance showers/t-storms over the deep south. No, this front won’t be moving through or even into the area but it could help in providing a weakness to get showers/t-storms stated a bit easier by the weekend or early next week.