Friday August 26 – Today may add support to the argument of pushing school opening until after Labor Day, but we can’t always rely on the calendar for the heat. What is already in place and building is an uncomfortable air mass due to high humidity. The dew points are in the 70s and the Heat Index will reach 100°F this afternoon. So thanks to a new policy, 37 schools in Baltimore County without air conditioning will closed. It’s a new policy that allows the announcement the night before a day expected to reach 90°F.
I’ve been in many of those older schools, and they bake! They hold heat from the day before and with poor circulation, it gets very uncomfortable in a hurry. It will be uncomfortable for most of us later today as the Heat Index will be oppressive making it feel like 100°F this afternoon. But this should just be for one day.
Outlook:
Temperatures will remain near 90F into much of next week. But the humidity will drop a little. The next sign of relief will be Thursday and Friday. We still must monitor any tropical development to our south (see below).
Tropics
The upper air pattern shows a ridge of High Pressure locked in place for the next week. But the slight adjustment has shifted the expected tropical development farther south… south of Florida…
No Triple Threat For the US
I have held off on the barrage of tropical updates in part because this past week’s rumors were exaggerated. Hurricane Gaston has been downgraded to a Tropical Storm. It may resurge as a hurricane, but stay well east of Bermuda.
The next system will be forced south of the ridge over us, the slowing the development and pushing the track south of Florida. As you see here, the two systems the National Hurricane Center is tracking shows very small development chances in the next 2 days. However, the focus into the Gulf of Mexico is bas news for flood plagued areas. We need to watch this for two reasons: 1) Could anything move north and bring us rain? 2) Could we develop a pattern to last for the rest of tropical season and perhaps hint at winter storm patterns?
Tropical Storm Hermine?
Invest 99 is the system that now shows a path south of Florida and then tracking into the eastern Gulf of Mexico. This is a track for the Low Pressure and not a promise of development and naming.
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