Much of the country North and West of us has been and continues to be wet while a drying trend has begun in parts of the Southeastern part of the nation.
There is no drought here yet but Southeast Georgia is drier than normal on a short-term basis. However, there are signs of at least a short-term drought expanding over much of the state.
Trends this time of year and June are important because weather patterns often start to “lock-in” for weeks or months at a time and in Summer drying usually means frying.
With an upper-level trough of low pressure out West a ridge of high pressure pops over the Southeast, with wet and stormy in-between and below-normal rain and above-normal temperatures under the jet stream ridge:
In this blog back on MAY 11th I first showed you what was coming. Our first HEAT WAVE of the new year and "the summer" although it's still Spring.
There are no signs of this locking in for the rest of the Summer YET, but like I said we need to watch the trends.
As of now it looks like the hot dry pattern will break down by June. Fingers crossed.
BOTH the ECMWF model ensemble and the GFS ensemble (maps below) show below-average rainfall the next 1-6 weeks with mostly above-average temperatures. Soils will dry rapidly and will impact lawns gardens and farmers/ranchers.
Notice above the “Urban Heat Island” effect around Atlanta really shows up in the map which shows above and below normal temperature areas in the map above.
ESTIMATED RAINFALL NEXT 7-DAYS:
The flooding in the nations mid section this Spring has been reminiscent of 1993 and the current sea-surface temperature patterns are a decent match to 2014. Using those as analog predictors for the summer show this:
IF the coming summer mimics those years it be a warmer than normal summer with rain near-normal to below normal.
The CAS soil moisture model however shows a much more temperate Summer, much less extreme:
I’ll have my thoughts on Summer by early June. Meanwhile here is the next 15 day Ensemble models temperature guidance:
If your local soils are wet or if you get a lucky thunderstorm that will hold temperatures down but if you stay rain-free for much of the duration then the higher values become more probable.
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