UPPER PENINSULA -- Over the past seven days, we've seen warmer than normal temperatures. It's been because of a large area of upper-air ridging across the southern portions of the country.
The air flow around this ridge has helped warm, southerly winds to dominate our low-level wind direction for the last week. We've seen warm front after warm front come into the area with no sign of relief.
We've also experienced a lot of moisture and not too much of the kind that precipitates out of the air, but the kind that hangs in the air, making it feel sticky.
That's humidity. Dew points are related to how humid the air is. Generally, the higher the dew point and the closer it is to the actual temperature, the more moist the air will feel. And we've seen dew points into the 70s throughout the U.P. recently! This kind of humid air only makes the heat feel even hotter.
The question on everyone's mind is when will the relief from the heat get here?
Well, already we've seen a weak cool front pass through the area on Thursday helping to keep our temperatures out of the 90s like they were on Wednesday. On that day, we broke the record for the highest temperature since 1998 at 94 degrees.
We saw a cold front pass through the U.P. early this weekend on Saturday morning. Our winds will change to northerly, bringing much cooler weather to the entire U.P. compared to last week. Some of the coolest areas along the shores of Lake Superior could see high temperatures only as warm as in the upper 60s this weekend. Otherwise, Saturday and Sunday looks to have highs mainly in the 70s.
It's also possible that we'll see some rain and thunderstorms over the weekend, mainly on Sunday.
And already by Monday, we'll see high temperatures return to the 80s, especially in the interior-west near the Wisconsin line. And our highs will stay in the 80s through the entire week. The warmest day will be next Wednesday when the high temperatures will top out near 90 degrees, although most areas will see mid-to-upper 80s then.
Saving the best news for last, let's talk about the title of this news story. Based on history, we can expect less warm weather around starting today. All it takes is a look to the almanac to see that July 23 is when the long-term normal high temperatures for each day begin to decrease since the start of summer.
So, today's cooldown should've been climatologically expected. And, we'll generally see the hot weather fading away as we make our way into August. We can't rule out a few more hot spells as Summer will try to make its last stand. But the general pattern will take us towards cooler weather next month.
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