Slight Break in the Long Summer Heat

The high today at DFW "only" hit 97° , this qualified for the coolest day in the last ten:

There was a little light rain in our northwest corner today in Young and Stephens counties, highs stayed in the 80's there. A few drops reached into Parker and Tarrant county this afternoon but mostly it was just a little bit of cloud cover for the metro area. We'll keep a slight chance for light rain in the same area overnight:

The true gift was the lower humidity, dewpoints were in the low 50's this afternoon, about the lowest they've been this summer. The lower humidity will stick around for a few days but the heat is not going anywhere. Here is your forecast for tomorrow:

Notice the slight chance for a little sprinkle in the morning hours. Those chances are west and northwest of the Metroplex but we should at least have some clouds around in the morning. They'll break apart as the day goes on.

What's ahead? Given the time of year you can likely guess. It's early August, the heart of our 100° season. I added up all the 100° days since 1980 at DFW Airport and divided the summer months in half. You can see that twice as many occurred in the start of August than either in the last half of July or the second half of this month.

Our old friend the upper level subtropical ridge is building back up out to the west. The closer and stronger it gets the hotter and drier we get. This looks like the general weather pattern for the first half of the month:

We are in the midst of our driest spell in the last two years at DFW. It looks like it'll continue to roll along:

Here are the numbers. Yep, we return right back to the 100's as the humid increases and the rain chances stay away.