Summertime pattern shapes up over the Mid-South

It's been a while since I posted my own thoughts, so it's probably time. I use this blog to not only write about my opinions on weather and other topics, but pass along information that I think may interest my readers. Lately, I've been in "passing along" mode, so today it's a forecast discussion.

However, I first want to send out a thank you to all of you who check The MWN Blog regularly, or who just happen to drop in searching for a certain topic. In the past 2 weeks or so, we touched a couple of milestones. The blog's visitor count since July 2008, when visitor tracking was added, hit 13,000 on June 3rd. In addition, the page view count went over 20,000 on May 28. I know there are plenty of you who also read this through means other than just on the blog site (the only place visitors are tracked), such as Facebook, Blogged, by e-mail subscription, etc. Thank you for relying on the writings here to keep you informed and maybe even mildly entertained. ;-)

On to more important topics, like the weather! Summertime has definitely arrived, even though the calendar says it's still 11 days away. The signs of summer are building upper level high pressure, south wind pushing very warm humid air into the region, stalled fronts sparking scattered showers and thunderstorms, and the occasional Ozone Advisory! We've had all of these in the past week. The summertime forecast, which can occasionally be fairly mundane, is anything but that when a frontal boundary approaches as we have now. You never know exactly where or when the next cluster of storms is going to appear! I generally don't like blanketing "chance of rain" forecasts out for days on end, but unfortunately that generally ends up being accurate at the end of a summer day. Some folks will get very wet (like Tipton County this morning) and some won't get a drop!

A frontal system will move into the area tomorrow, providing an increased chance of t'storms, some of which could pulse above severe limits with hail or damaging wind gusts, especially during peak heating hours. The front will hang out for a couple of days before retreating back to the north as high pressure re-builds over the region this weekend. Until then, we can expect the daily thunderstorm chance, highs in the upper 80s to near 90, and dewpoints that make for uncomfortably humid conditions. By early next week, the upper-level high really starts to assert itself and we're looking at the potential for the hottest days of the year yet (mid 90s are possible) with a fair amount of humidity still hanging on. In fact, we could see the first mentions of heat indices over 100 degrees. Memphis summer is definitely back!