Thursday was one of the hottest days of the year in Western New York.
The peak heating is over now, with the passage of a cold front on Friday morning. It’s not that we’re headed into a truly cool period, but more a matter of a retreat from sultry midsummer heat back to statistically seasonable temperatures. In most years, July is the warmest month of the summer around here, only sometimes superseded by August. Thursday’s official high of 91 at the airport tied as the warmest day so far with an early June high, and is now the third 90-plus degree day we’ve had. But the average high is currently 80 this time of the year, so “seasonable” or near normal temperatures can’t be construed as “cool.” Cooler, true enough, but this is not a fundamental pattern flip to cool.
While I went on at length on News 4 Wednesday evening about how we didn’t have much need for additional significant rain right now, the latest U.S. Drought Monitor (with a data cutoff of last Tuesday morning) shows otherwise.
This multi-agency product doesn’t just depict surface soil moisture, but also includes streamflows, reservoir levels, deeper soil moisture and water tables, as well as vegetative health. The area of moderate drought has shrunk from the previous week, but still covers a large territory.
With the departure of Friday morning’s scattered showers and thunderstorms to the southeast of the metro area, a drier air mass will slowly filter in enough so you’ll feel the difference by Friday evening. By the dinner hour, dew points are modeled to return to the more comfortable mid-50s, making for better sleeping weather Friday night.
Read: You can shut down your AC and open some windows, if you’d like.
On Saturday, weak high pressure will bring us a partly sunny sky with comfortable moderate humidity.
If you’re headed to the Taste of Buffalo, with very little breeze it’s still going to feel somewhat…
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