WEEKEND WEATHER: 🌧️ Very typical summer weather will greet our Saturday. It’ll be very warm (topping out around 86 degrees), very muggy (relative humidity in excess of 90%), and there’s about a 50/50 chance of scattered thunderstorms. Early indications are that coverage of storms will be less impressive today than yesterday, when some areas saw flood advisories or flood warnings posted. Barring changes (which are always possible), more of us will stay dry than will get wet today.
Unlike a typical summer pattern, thunderstorm coverage may actually increase overnight, as a result of energy rotating through the atmosphere. There’s about a 70% chance of thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow.
NEXT WEEK: It’s going to get even hotter next week. Temperatures may push 90 degrees on Tuesday. However, a weak cold front will keep thunderstorm chances alive Tuesday and Wednesday, and should knock our high temperatures back to near 80 degrees by Thursday. The end of the week looks dry.
FURTHER OUT: A very boring weather pattern continues to take shape for the rest of July and into early August — hot but not exceptionally so (relative to this time of year), with plenty of thunderstorm chances but probably not as extreme as what we saw for much of June and early July. It just looks like a very typical dog-days summer pattern.
RIVER CONDITIONS: Streamflows continue to be above normal for this time of year, which is good for recreational paddlers. The Big South Fork River was flowing around 600 cubic feet per second (cfs) last night, about twice its normal flow in mid-July. Clear Fork was flowing around 250 cfs, about five times its normal flow for this time of year. Water clarity is improving, and water temperatures are rising into the upper 70s during the peak of afternoon heating.
