National Weather Service: Too Early to Make Predictions About Summer Weather

(KNSI) — It’s felt like summer for a couple of weeks, at least, but will the hotter weather pattern hold?

It remains to be seen.

National Weather Service meteorologist Tyler Hasenstein says the models have yet to predict a trend for the next three months as far as an overall departure from the norm for temperature or precipitation. He says if we have one to two more weeks without significant rainfall, we’ll tip back into pre-drought conditions. However, an El Nino pattern suggests that the significant droughts of the last two summers are less likely this time around.

“With kind of that southern stream jet, if it were to begin to tilt a little bit farther north we would be in a better pattern for bigger weather systems, which would mean more storms as a whole.”

Average precipitation in the summer is about an inch a week. We were two to three inches below the monthly norm in May.

Hasenstein says that in spring, you can see occasional sweltering high temperatures, but from now through August is when you notice the warm nights as well.

“Now our dew points are kind of in the 50s and 60s which is far more typical as we head into early June and that does equal a higher threshold for low temperatures overnight because, as you well know, temperatures can only fall to their dew points. After that, they have to fall together.”

June 1st begins meteorological summer, defined by the time when we see the warmest temps, which is typically June, July and August. Astronomical summer is based on the position of the Earth relative to the sun. The summer solstice this year happens June 21st at 9:57 a.m. CDT.

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