Humidity Here Through Friday

The graphic below shows the dew points modeled for Friday morning.   As you can see, there is a rather steep gradient that is pushing towards PA by this time.  It will not be until Saturday, however, until we see a noticeable drop in the dew point temps and thus have a more comfortable feel to the air.

The hi resolution satellite image below shows that partly to mostly cloudy skies will prevail over PA for most of Wednesday.  There is a slug of "dry" air now over WV which will gradually work its way into PA.  However with the strong June sun and the fuel in terms of water vapor present, the thunderstorm pump is primed and ready to ignite given any little "umph" today on behalf of mom nature.  So basically now through Friday afternoon, a storm of relative strength in terms of wind and rain could be spawned here in PA. 

The maps below again indicate the probability of precip for the 6 hour period ending this evening.  Over the next 5 days, this is our greatest risk of showers and storms.  Again, I emphasize with the heating of the day in such a soupy air mass, storms could pop right through Friday, but today looks especially susceptible to this type of thundershower activity.

The storms prediction unit agrees with the Smitty assessment:

By this weekend, the air should become more reasonable with lower humidity and slightly cooler temps as indicated by the 500 mb map for Saturday evening.  Note the nice broad trough or dip over PA with the nice little reinforcing shortwave whipping additional cooler and drier air in from the north.

Looking further into next week, the global modeling begins to diverge on a solution.  The Euro looks cooler while the GFS looks almost hot for end of June and early July.  The Madden Jullian Oscillation suggests the Euro might be onto something as lower pressures are beginning to swing through the Gulf.  This in turn allows for offshore flow from the north making a drier and often cooler NE part of the USA.  The graphic below shows the divergence among the 2 models.  On the right, the GFS has a HUGE RIDGE going up into Newfoundland while the Euro has a trough in the exact same area and cool weather would rule east of the Appalachians......time will tell.

The only good thing about this humidity is that I finally put on our AC last evening.  And although the staging area in front of my home for the Extreme Makeover Home Edition was as busy as the South Bridge on any Friday afternoon, with my windows and doors closed, I was able to obtain several hours of shut-eye and even achieve some outstanding REM cycles!

Have a good end of the week.

Smitty

AA:  Storms anytime now through Friday, although Wed & Thurs look to be the days for greatest likelihood of storms.  Could be feisty.  Air's on and I'm now able to sleep at night.