Slight T'Storm Chances Before the Big Bake

It's halfway thru July and halfway thru summer. How has the summer been so far? If we use as a gauge the number of 95° days recorded at DFW we quickly see this summer has ended a recent trend of cooler ones. We've hit 95 or higher at DFW 27 times since June 1st. That happened only 14 times just last summer by this date:

We had a very long (about 200 miles from end-to-end) outflow boundary roll over the Metroplex this early morning. This was formed from a large complex of storms that died out over Wichita Falls. Here is a radar image from 4:00am:

This is of meteorological note because these outflow fronts stall out and create weak boundaries for thunderstorm development later today. The risk is small but around none the less:

Another small gift from a large-scale outflow is one of slightly cooler temperatures and lower dewpoints. It made for a nice start to the morning over the NW quadrant of north Texas:

The high clouds from these storms will dissipate out, ample sunshine will warm us up quickly. Another July day of more heat in store for us:

High pressure off to our west has allowed Panhandle and Southern Plain late day storms to reach us by morning of the next day. That parade ends as the dome of high pressure expands over the central portion of the United States to give us hot and dry weather next week:

This is a significant weather pattern shift and the first time this summer it looks like we'll be locking into that REALLY hot weather (triple-digit highs). Over the last couple of weeks we've enjoyed occasional rain from this northwest flow aloft. In fact, so far this is the wettest July in the last nine years at DFW:

The weather pattern has also produced some relief from the heat on a few of the days. But when that high pressure builds over the Central Plains that means very hot & dry conditions.

Starting tomorrow we could get to the end of July with above normal highs and very little rain. The extended certainly shows the trend starting up: