Is mowing the lawn part of your plans for Tuesday?
If not, you're like me, and we're probably going to regret that decision. We're looking at blast furnace weather across the Carolinas later this week -- on the heels of some unseasonably cool weather.
In fact, we could go from record cold to record warmth in Charlotte over a period of 60 hours.
Almost unbelievably mild high pressure has taken hold of Carolinas weather on Tuesday, bringing much cooler temperatures and very low humidity levels. Skies would be blue, if not for a few areas of cirrus clouds being spun into the region around the circulation of Tropical Storm Debby.
Wednesday morning's low temperature forecast in Charlotte is 55 degrees, and we seem almost certain to break the record for the date -- 59 degrees, set in 1879.
Temperatures will soar quickly Wednesday, climbing into the upper 80s. But with very low humidity, it won't seem intolerable. So if you didn't get the lawn mowed today, you probably still have Wednesday.
Then it gets ugly. The cool high pressure area will modify by Thursday, and temperatures will keep soaring. We're looking for highs in the middle 90s, but once again with low humidity levels. Then again, 95 degrees is hot -- no matter what the humidity is.
The chance for record highs will come Friday afternoon, when temperatures will climb near the 100-degree mark in Charlotte. The same is likely Saturday. Record highs each day are 102 degrees, set in 1959 (for June 29) and 1945 (for June 30).
High pressure is forecast to weaken slightly Sunday and Monday, but all that means is the high temperature will be in the middle 90s.
There are signs that a slightly cooler air mass might arrive around or slightly before the Fourth of July, but there almost certainly won't be a return to what we experienced Tuesday.
Debby update: Weak tropical system are a real pain to forecast, and Debby was such a system. Originally, meteorologists expected Debby to move westward across the Gulf of Mexico and make landfall in south Texas as a Category 1 hurricane.
Instead, with very little in the way of steering currents and wind shear that disrupted the strengthening process, Debby remained a weak tropical storm and moved northeast. It likely will become a tropical depression later Tuesday, cross the northern Florida peninsula, and then swing out to sea while regaining tropical storm status.
But there's a lesson from Debby. Even as a weak tropical storm, it produced some amazing rainfall totals -- more than 20 inches in parts of Florida. Street flooding and power outages have been common across the Sunshine State.
It's the rainfall and spin-off tornadoes that can make a weak or dying tropical storm so dangerous, and the western Carolinas sometimes are the target of such a system.
27 Haziran 2012 Çarşamba
Record cold, then record heat?
How hot will it get?
The words "100 degrees" are scary to some people, but anyone who has spent a bit of time in the Charlotte region has lived through those temperatures before and knows it comes with the territory.
We also know that 100 degrees can mean several things, depending on the humidity.
The National Weather Service is forecasting high temperatures in Charlotte of 100 degrees Friday, 103 Saturday, and 100 Sunday. It's possible Monday could hit the 100-degree mark, too.
But it also appears as if the humidity will be rather low through at least Friday. That doesn't mean the inside of your car won't feel like a blast furnace when you unlock the door at 3 p.m., but it also means the atmosphere won't feel like a wet rag.
That was the problem last year. We had a pair of 100-degree days in 2011, but what made the summer somewhat miserable was the persistent high humidity. Want to know when the humidity is up? Check the morning low temperatures. If they're in the mid 70s, it's humid. That happened a lot last summer. That's forecast for Saturday through Monday, so be prepared.
Here are a few things I've picked up while looking at the forecast for this weekend and early next week:
Hot 2007 ... It appears as if the upcoming heat wave is the hottest since August 2007. We hit 100 degrees six times that month -- Aug. 8, 9, 10, 16, 21 and 22. It hit 104 degrees on Aug. 9 and 10, 102 on Aug. 8, and 101 degrees the other days.
"Mild" Atlanta ... In many people's minds, Atlanta symbolizes the heat of summer in the South. But it hasn't reached 100 degrees in Atlanta since Aug. 22, 2007 -- nearly five years. We've had four 100-degree days in Charlotte since then.
The Heat Belt ... Long-time Carolinas residents know that the hottest summer temperatures always take place in a corridor stretching from Augusta, to Columbia, to Florence, and then up through the Fayetteville area. Forecast highs this weekend in that area are about the same as Charlotte, but the humidity is almost always higher there. Watch for some really high heat index numbers, measuring the combined impact of heat and humidity. It's possible to see 110-degree heat indices in that area this weekend.
Charlotte's 100-degree history ... Here's a look at the last 10 years:
2011: 2 days (July 29, 100; July 30, 101)
2010: 2 days (July 8, 101; July 25, 101)
2009: none
2008: none
2007: 6 days (Aug. 8, 102; Aug. 9, 104; Aug. 10, 104; Aug. 16, 101; Aug. 21, 101; Aug. 22, 101)
2006: none
2005: 2 days (July 26, 100; July 27, 100)
2004: none
2003: none
2002: none