00:00It's time for the forecast feed. We're going to take you into the western U.S. and then we're going
00:04to spread into the plains.
00:05We're tracking smoke and escalating heat. We're tracking that summer swelter. It was in the east.
00:12It will be hot in parts of the southeast for a few days, but especially Florida, Georgia, still in the
00:18Carolinas.
00:19But the searing heat is going to build into some of the Rockies and the northern plains into early next
00:23week and this weekend.
00:24Before we get there, though, under this ridge of high pressure, a lot of this smoke is just being trapped
00:30near the ground.
00:31I'm going to get myself out of the way. You can see a lot of smoke out there through the
00:35evening tonight.
00:36There is some fire activity in southern California, also into the Great Basin west of Denver.
00:43Several fires have been burning in eastern parts of Utah.
00:46But the smoke production, you may notice, it's a little more limited than it was because the winds are a
00:52little bit lighter.
00:53Now, with that said, the wind may be light, so the fire activity, the growth of each fire and number
00:59of acres per day is more limited than it was back when the wind was strong.
01:04But on the other edge of the table, the other side of the table, the other side of the coin,
01:09sinking air under this big zone of high pressure that's not producing much wind, it is trapping like a lid.
01:14Some of the pollutants near the ground is acting as basically just there's an inversion in place.
01:20So it's acting like a lid to suppress all the smoke and keep it in place over many of the
01:26Great Basin cities.
01:28Now, early in this event, Salt Lake City has not really been downwind of the fires.
01:33They've actually been to your south and east, and a lot of the smoke's been carried east of Salt Lake
01:37City.
01:38But places like Grand Junction have been a little bit more in the line of some of that smoke.
01:43So there's what we call an inversion, a layer aloft where it's hot near the ground, but again, especially at
01:51night and into the early part of the day,
01:54before the ground really heats up, there's often a persistent zone of warmth aloft with a pattern like this.
02:01And even at times during the day, this strong high pressure system is leading to some warming aloft as well.
02:09And that warmer air aloft is just like a lid, keeping the smoke in place, and it will keep air
02:16quality low.
02:17Before we fully get into the heat wave, I just wanted to show you the chemistry model.
02:22And you can see with the lack of strong flow, the winds are not going to be carrying the smoke
02:28away to the east quite as much as we get into Friday and Saturday.
02:30You can see the smoke production there in southeastern Utah and southwestern parts of Colorado.
02:36Instead of a plume that's being yanked rapidly out into the northern plains, you'll notice it changes character.
02:43Let's go into the weekend.
02:44And now we're dealing with just kind of this lazy flow that allows it to spin, to basically sit and
02:50just marinate there under a strong ridge of high pressure.
02:53So the air quality is not going to be good there in the heart of the Four Corners region.
02:57But it may be still okay up into areas like Denver and Salt Lake City for part of the time
03:03if the smoke stays farther south.
03:04And that's what this particular model is hinting at.
03:07Now let's look at the center of the ridge of high pressure.
03:10Let's go back to where we are beginning.
03:12And in the present time, there is this strengthening, developing ridge of high pressure with a relatively small confined area
03:19of 594 decametres.
03:22That's the height line.
03:24And this is basically just a measure of the altitude at which you have to travel as you go up
03:30to hit 500 millibars as the pressure gets lower.
03:33It gets kind of complicated.
03:33What I want you to know is while that bubble, the 594 bubble, is relatively small, the heat wave is
03:39still kind of in its early stages.
03:41But watch what happens with it and watch where it goes.
03:43It grows.
03:44Suddenly, the 594 line, it just kind of meanders around.
03:50And it doesn't really begin to grow in scale until we get into the weekend.
03:53And now it's occupying really most of the Great Basin.
03:57And it's beginning to pull north.
03:59And then we go into next week.
04:00And look at this.
04:00Look how big it gets.
04:01And now, I think for the first time this year, at least as far as I can recall, a 600
04:09decameter ridge begins to present itself.
04:11That's really hot air there.
04:13That is a swollen atmosphere.
04:15And that's like a mega heat dome there over the central plains, Monday into Tuesday.
04:21And if you're on the west side of that, you're going to be in an area where that clockwise flow
04:25is going to be drawing extra flow from the south and some component west of the ridge.
04:31If you're on the east side, it's hot there in Chicago, but it's flow from the north that at least
04:36a loft is going to be driving some occasional disturbances through the flow.
04:40And you might be getting some occasional cool downs from a thunderstorm or two.
04:42So if you're under the center of that ridge or west there, it's going to be searing heat.
04:47And this is a product called the shift of tails.
04:50It's a statistical way of looking at how unusual are the temperatures.
04:53If you have a shift of tails here, this EFI value that's spotting us up into the purple in the
05:00area around the Carolina coast or Florida, you might be five or six degrees above average this time of the
05:05year.
05:05It doesn't sound like much because the atmosphere is so stabilized by the water nearby.
05:11In South Florida, if you're five degrees above average in July or August, you might be near a record.
05:17It might be a case there are days where the average high is 89 and the record high is 94.
05:22If you're in Bismarck, you've got to be 20 or 25 degrees above your average to get to record territory
05:27because there's no water around you.
05:28So, yes, it's going to be steamy in the southeast, but again, it's only maybe five or six degrees above
05:34average in year records for some.
05:35But then that heat backs off and look at what goes on on Saturday, July 11th, Sunday, July 12th into
05:41Monday, the 13th.
05:42We're looking at a signal strengthening here in the central Rockies into the northern plains.
05:46That's where the heat really escalates.
05:48So what are we looking at here?
05:50You're looking at highs in some spots in the southeast.
05:53There's a signal of 103 in Columbia, South Carolina, but there's not a whole lot of agreement there.
05:57The GFS may be a little aggressive with that.
05:59But watch as the heat begins to build.
06:01Here we have, I'm going to skip ahead.
06:03Here I see 103 in far eastern Montana on Monday.
06:07I see 100 there in west central South Dakota.
06:11Wednesday, a lot of 103s, Montana and South Dakota.
06:13What's the Europeans say?
06:14Not as hot, but it's hot.
06:16I see some 94s and then some bubbles of 100 plus in central and southern South Dakota.
06:20So I'm going to close this out with a quick look at our graphics.
06:23And the weekend, the heat builds in the northern plains.
06:27It gets hot out there.
06:28And you can see we heat up.
06:30July 10th is Friday through the 15th.
06:32Takes us into early next week.
06:33The center of high pressure then pulls from the Four Corners region up into parts of Montana.
06:38I didn't mean to double click there.
06:39Goes up into parts of Wyoming and Montana.
06:41And I'm going to close with a look at some record challenging highs on Saturday.
06:45And really this is just the beginning.
06:47Salt Lake City 105, your all-time record high is 107.
06:50106 is July 11th's record.
06:52I'm going to close with a look at some record.
06:52I'm going to close with a look at some record.
06:52I'm going to close with a look at some record.
06:52I'm going to close with a look at some record.
06:53I'm going to close with a look at some record.
06:53I'm going to close with a look at some record.
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