Sunday, July 1, 2012

Weather words of the week: It's not the heat, the humidity!

A sizzling start to July continues this week. We set rainfall records in June and even though most of us will not see a drop of rain this week it is still having a big impact on our weather. The old saying it is not the heat but the humidity are the weather words of the week.

Our hot high pressure dome is causing very high evaporation rates due to our saturated ground causing dangerous heat indices of 110-120! Some of our hotter locations recorded a heat index of 124 in Brunswick, Georgia at the Glynco Airport as dewpoints were an Amazon-like 82!! This was only 5 degrees off Jacksonville's all-time heat index record set back in 1942 of 129 when you could fry a whole meal on the sidewalk. So yes this is about as hot as it gets in Florida and please be careful in all this heat. I have moved my 6 mile runs inside to the tread mill until further notice.

How long will this last? We are in a very slow-moving pattern with a Greenland block in place. As a result, we may not see any major changes until July 10th with temperatures holding in the lower to middle 90s at the beach to the middle to upper 90s inland.