WEATHER BLOG: Hot Week Ahead

No major changes for Monday afternoon but we did trend the high temperature down to 75. With clouds and showers around right now, that should keep temperatures from rising as fast Monday afternoon because even if showers press off to the southeast there will still be a good deal of clouds around and we should be around the same temperature (75) that we had Sunday at BWI. 

But the big story this week will be the change to much hotter air during midweek. There'll be more of a southwesterly flow of air developing by Wednesday afternoon, but this process is going to take a while to unfold, because a high pressure system will be taking that long to establish itself off of the coast of the Carolinas. Therefore, we can expect morning clouds to break for some sunshine -- and temperatures should return to the 70s in most places.                                                                    

A handful of towns along the immediate coast may fail to get out of the 60s, which also would resemble Sunday's outcome.  With some low clouds returning to some areas Monday night, temperatures will wind up in the 50s in the typically cooler spots and in the 60s elsewhere, including the bigger cities along the coastal plain.

The hottest day of the week appears to be Thursday, when the combination of a southwest wind and surging dewpoint temperatures in the upper 60s will take highs mostly in the mid and upper 90s and it will make it "feel like" it's greater than 100 in some places. Again, the heat shouldn't be quite as extreme along the coast, but even these places will be quite humid with afternoon temperatures in the upper 80s. 

As the ridge of high pressure responsible for the two days of extreme heat starts to break down on Thursday night and Friday, there can be a couple of showers and a thunderstorm scattered about the area. Some of these on Friday could bring strong wind gusts and a drenching downpour, when most high temperatures will be in the lower 90s.