High Heat and Humidity Returns; Keeping Eye on Tropics

The Pee Dee is settling into a typical summer pattern this week. After a breif break with lower humidity over the weekend, high heat and humidity is returning. Heat advisories may be needed starting as early as tomorrow. Thursday and Friday are likely to the hottest days.

This afternoon will be partly sunny and hot with a chance of scattered thunderstorms late this afternoon and this evening. Highs for Dillon, Marion and Marlboro counties will be 90 to 93. The Storm Prediction Center has us in a "marginal" risk of severe weather today and tonight with the scattered storms.

Tomorrow, Thursday and Friday stay much the same with partly to mostly sunny days and a chance of scattered afternoon and evening storms. Highs tomorrow 92 to 95, then 94 to 98 Thursday and Friday. Heat index liklely to be 105 and higher Thursday and Friday.

In the tropics, a tropical disturbance still hundreds of miles east of the Caribbean Islands only has limited showers with it now. This system does have a better chance to develop a few days from now though as it moves westward, and there could be a system to keep an eye on off the SE coast or in the far eastern Gulf of Mexico later this weekend. Here is European Ensemble Model "EPS" depiction of the weather map by Sunday night/Monday morning. An ensemble model means that the same model is run many different times with slightly different assumptions. Each separate run is called a "member".

When you are looking at this map, the larger L off the coast of Florida is the "mean" position of the possible area of low pressure from all of the variations of the European enemble model, and the small plotted numbers are the actual predicted position of each individual member. The bottom line from this forecast is that there is a lot of uncertainty, but we may be looking a weak tropical system in this area later this weekend or early next week. I will be watching for any trends in this forecast and keep you posted.