Summer, the sequel: Near 90 or hotter 1st 7 days of the State Fair?

The Other Shoe? (or Flip Flop?)

There's been a fair amount of grumbling about or cooler than average weather lately. Soon, you may be longing  for these pleasantly cool days as you stroll the Minnesota State Fair -- dripping with sweat.

Our upper air pattern appears ready to shift in the next few days.  A "heat pump high" will set up and delivers pulses of heat and humidity from the south and west by next week.

Good sleeping weather? Enjoy it while it lasts.

Also in the blog today, our overhead smoke plume from Canadian and western fires eased a bit Tuesday. Why it may return.

Overall this looks like a much warmer stretch of weather the next few weeks, as summer makes a comeback.

There are still some good days at the beach or on the lake ahead.

Snow Cone Futures?

Here's a hot stock tip. Buy snow cone, ice cream and lemonade futures for the Minnesota State Fair. They list those on the NASDAQ, don't they? Isn't there some kind of " State Fair weather derivative" or hedge fund? Is there a Planalytics cool beverage alert on the way?

It's not rocket science  to guess the heat switch would flip back "on" at some point the rest of this summer. Next week looks like the week.

The upper air pattern finally appears ready to shift back to summer gear. The Global Forecast System and Euro runs have been hinting at it now for several days. Heres' a look at the GFS upper air chart for next week showing a distinct 500 millibar "heat pump high" building over the central United States.

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Image: NOAA GFS Model

The GFS output for the first six days of the fair looks much warmer to downright steamy. High between 87 and 95 with dew points in the 70s? 90 degrees or hotter for the 1st 7 days of the Fair?  That may be overdone, but if we get there it will be a big change from these pleasantly cool days.

If we get a stretch of temps in the 90s with dew points in the mid to upper 70s, this will be a truly unpleasant, oppressive heat wave. Possibly the most prolonged stretch of heat this summer.  Here's a look at forecast dew points as they rise toward the tropical 70 degree mark next week.

Here's a great display from Weatherspark using European model data. The steady slow temp rise kicks in tomorrow and peaks in the 90s next week.

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center agrees and is cranking out above average temps for Minnesota for the first time since early to mid July as the western heat dome spills into Minnesota.

The shorter term forecast for the rest of this week looks great. Enjoy our carbon copy sunny days with some puffy cumulus clouds as highs push back toward 80 degrees. The next rain chances roll in Thursday night and Friday.

Smoke eases for now

You may have noticed skies over much of Minnesota were a little "bluer" Tuesday.

That's because our northerly flow pushed the main smoke plume from Canadian and western fires south and west into the Dakotas and Iowa. Twin Cities NWS has a nice take on the smoky skies...which may return later this week as winds shift into the southwest.

Smoke Creating Hazy Skies across Much of Western and Central North America

Forest fires across northwest Canada and portions of the western United States have produced a great deal of smoke over the past week. That smoke has been circulated by the atmosphere across much of the western portion of the continent, including the upper Midwest. The large scale weather pattern will be changing some over the coming days, which could help to shift the smoke and hazy skies out of many locations.

The image below provides an overview of the fire locations and smoke conditions this morning (Tuesday, August 13th).

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Weather models can be used not only to forecast how conditions may evolve in the future, but can also be helpful in evaluating how the observed weather came to be. The following image was generated using weather model information from Thursday (8/8) through Today (8/13). It depicts approximately where the air 100 meters above ground in Redwood Falls this morning was five days ago, illustrating it originated in the region of Canada where many forest fires have been occurring.

 

For now were breathing a little easier.