We’ve come a long way from last week. The heat and humidity have been building into the region for days. Today will be the crescendo. We started off this morning with hazy skies and temps in the 70s. It was steamy. Through the day we’ll have partly cloudy skies and light west/southwest winds. So high temps are going to push up into the mid 90s this afternoon.

Dew points are in the 70s. This will raise the heat index values up to about 100 to 107 degrees.

The record high temperature for today is 98 degrees (2006). So we aren’t far off from tying that record. This heat has prompted a Heat Advisory to be issued by the National Weather Service.

High pressure is centered offshore. There is a cold front over the Midwest and Great Lakes.

Tomorrow the front will slowly work down into our region, but it will probably stall out just to our north. We’ll have more clouds with a few late day showers and storms. There will be a higher chance for scattered storms inland/west. Those features should keep the temps more in the upper 80s to near 90 degrees. There will still be a few 90s inland/south.

We will cool down a little, but it will still feel like the mid 90s with the heat index. By Friday the front will sink a little more to the south. This will cool us down to the low-mid 80s. It will feel a lot better than today.

However, as the front drops south it may create a flare up of showers and storms. Our Future Trak model shows a large area during the midday and afternoon hours.

It would be great to get some rain. We are running about 2 inches below average for rainfall for the month. Some areas are drier than others, but my grass is definitely getting brown. Ironically, the rain could be heavy enough to create some brief street flooding if the current model is right. We’ll see.

Over the weekend that front will lift north again. We’ll have a few scattered showers and storms between Saturday and Sunday, but it will be far from a washout. High temps will rise to the upper 80s, and it will stay muggy.

A stronger cold front will drop to our south on Monday. After a few morning showers I’m hopeful that we’ll dry out during the day. That will be Labor Day. We should cool down to the low 80s. Then by Tuesday of next week it looks like we’ll have high temps dropping down to the 70s again with lower humidity. Cross your fingers.

Things may be starting to brew in the Atlantic. There are 2 small areas of possible development over the next few days.

They are out over the middle of the Atlantic. So I’m not too concerned right now. We’ll track these features over the next few days.

Meanwhile tropical storm Gilma is moving steadily towards Hawaii in the Pacific. It should weaken quite a bit before it gets close to the islands in a few days.

Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler