Heat Wave Weekend Begins

It's 11:30am on Saturday and it's hot outside. This is not news, because we've known this heat was coming for a while. But just in case you don't want to go outside to experience it yourself, I'll give you a report. It's hot. There ya go.

We have a "ring of fire" ridge set up every summer at some point. The reason this one is getting so much publicity is because of its intensity. We haven't seen pure heat and humidity combined like this since 2012. If you remember that summer, it was hot and dry. It was a summer where lawns died and no one wanted to go outside.

We could have a remake of that.

For comparison, the warmest temperature I have recorded in Canal Winchester on my weather station since 2012 was 94.3° back on 7/18/13. Tomorrow's forecasted high temperature? 95°. 

But lets not ignore today, where we should easily see the low 90s in Central Ohio. A couple of our northern counties are in the Heat Advisory along with Cincinnati:

Right now it looks like Monday could be our best shot at dropping below 90° for the entire week, with a chance of showers and thunderstorms that day. What we won't see is triple digits at all during this heat wave. Why? Humidity. The dewpoints that are causing us to be even more miserable are actually a contributing factor to keeping our ambient temperature lower than it could get. Dry air can heat up more than moist air, so while our heat index will top out well over 100°, the actual temperature shouldn't be allowed to top out more than the mid 90's.

It could always be worse. July 6-7 2012, we topped out at 101° both days. It's going to be hot and uncomfortable, but for now I don't see this heat wave being nearly as bad as the Summer of 2012.