Look ahead: Rounds of storms for Central and Southern US

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Long-Range Expert Joe Lundberg looks ahead to next week when rounds of thunderstorms could roll through the central and southern regions of the U.S. Hot and dry weather may bake the West.

Transcript

00:00Joe, thanks again for joining us this morning.

00:02We did want to take a look back again and see what you were talking about last week at this time.

00:06Okay.

00:08Really quick, Joe, homegrown development.

00:11This is where we're going to watch next week.

00:15We're going to watch it.

00:16It's an area where the upper levels are relatively cool often.

00:20If there's any little upper level load that tries to develop,

00:23if you can get far enough away from land, something could spin up.

00:26So this is the area we're watching during this time period in early July.

00:30Spot on, as always.

00:32And we have up that risk to a high risk now.

00:35So we're still keeping an eye on the tropics.

00:38But, Joe, there's a couple other things we've got to watch into the upcoming week.

00:41Yeah, I think the tropics outside of that are going to be pretty quiet, Melissa, in the week ahead.

00:45But the other big stories for next week, the heat and humidity,

00:48that's going to be returning to the mid-Atlantic states and southern New England to some degree.

00:52It's not going to be as bad as what we saw a couple of weeks ago

00:55when temperatures were in the upper 90s to 100 or better with that gruesome humidity.

00:59The humidity will be high, but the heat won't be so bad.

01:02Rounds of showers and thunderstorms could mean some severe weather.

01:04I'm more worried about flooding from areas of the Midwest into the Tennessee Valley

01:08and perhaps even late next week in the mid-Atlantic and northeast.

01:11The heat will be building in the west, and it's going to get hot and dry there.

01:14The reason for that is very simple.

01:15You look at the pattern for next week,

01:17there's going to be a big area of high-pressure building over the Four Corners region,

01:21pushing the jet stream northward, and as it does, hot and dry weather.

01:24Now, any disturbances that kind of skirt through the Pacific Northwest

01:27may touch off some dry thunderstorms, which would escalate the fire concern.

01:31So that's something we'll keep an eye on.

01:33Any monsoonal moisture trying to come up in here around the periphery of this ridge,

01:36again, could be the same thing, dry thunderstorms.

01:38But these won't be dry.

01:40These disturbances, when they come over the top of the ridge,

01:42will come down through the Dakotas and Minnesota,

01:44and they'll spark showers and thunderstorms.

01:46Some severe weather is on the table.

01:48I think the bigger concern overall would be that of repeated rounds of thunderstorms

01:52with flooding downpours, and that should spread southward down into the Mississippi Valley

01:56and eventually the Tennessee Valley.

01:58The question will be, does it cut into this heat and humidity late next week?

02:01And the reason why I'm concerned about that is a series of fronts

02:04that will be coming through this particular northwest flow.

02:08One of them will come into the mid-Atlantic states and northeast Monday night and Tuesday,

02:12and that's going to produce some shower and thunderstorm activity ahead of it,

02:15probably upper 80s and low 90s, very humid conditions across the mid-Atlantic and northeast,

02:20some of that with that tropical moisture coming up from the south.

02:23A second front will come through later in the week,

02:25and that may slow down enough that it allows the shower and thunderstorm activity

02:29to spread northeastward through the mid-Atlantic into New England.

02:32So there you see it, a flood risk from the Midwest to the Appalachians,

02:36heat relief from the lakes to northern New England,

02:37but very tropical across the mid-south to the mid-Atlantic for much of next week.

02:42And you're saying very tropical, but the tropics, you mentioned, not so active.

02:47Why are we talking about it being relatively quiet?

02:49Let's discount what's happening off the southeast coast for the next couple of days.

02:53That's an enclosed situation. We talked about that last week.

02:55That'll go away after Monday.

02:57But the rest of the tropical region, the main development region,

03:00water temperatures in here remain a little below historical averages.

03:03There's a lot of Saharan dust.

03:05That dry air is something that chokes the development of tropical waves

03:08as they come across the Atlantic, and it's early in the Cape Verde season anyway.

03:12And then as you go across the rest of the basin, there's strong upper-level wind shear.

03:16You pull all of that into a pot, and it says most of the tropics are going to be quiet into mid-July.

03:22Something I think a lot of folks will be happy about.

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