WEATHERAmerica Newsletter; Sunday, July 6, 2026; SUMMARY

[Larry Cosgrove]

June Wrap-Up

Mostly a warmer-than-normal June, with a cold pocket in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming due to a late cold and frozen precipitation event. Much of the West and central USA, including Texas and Louisiana, were routinely hot. The Eastern Seaboard averaged rather warm, but thunderstorms cooled the atmosphere between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains.

Severe weather frequency was high in the Midwest, especially in Illinois as has been the pattern during the Spring. There were also areas of extreme rainfall interspersed with dryness from Texas into the Upper Midwest, while most of the Atlantic Coastal Plain and Florida remain dry. The worst hot air and drought were in the West, with a persistent Sonoran heat ridge.

Still A MODERATE El Nino.....

Even though many keep sounding the alarm bells about the "Super El Nino", the episode has not significantly changed from its moderate ranking. The overall look of the three important oceanic theaters supports a Pacific Basin-wide, borderline strong +ENSO signature that may rapidly collapse around Christmas to a weak status around the last week of March. What is most important here is that the apparent weather impacts that might support a superlative title are not yet visible on model projections. We do know that a typical heat ridge alignment is evolving, where the western two-thirds of the USA may see an immense siege of hot weather along the lines of 2011 and 2012 (see more on this below). And the evidence of a weaker than average tropical cyclone output in the Atlantic Basin is strong. That said, I doubt that some of the outrageous numbers shown on the model projections will verify. In other words: Strong, quite possibly. But "Super" seems like a reach.

The Mother Of All Heat Ridges?

Many in the Great Lakes and the Eastern Seaboard are probably in that "the worst is over" mode with regard to hot weather. I doubt that is true, if only because average temperatures in USA climatology do not start a steady decline until after July 23. And while it may be true that some locations in New England and the Mid-Atlantic may not realize the temperatures seen recently, the evidence for a more widespread, hotter outcome in most of the lower 48 states is very strong! All of the operational models and ensemble sets project a 597dcm or higher ridge core at 500MB over Missouri and Illinois between July 14 - 19. And possibly beyond that time frame! I am mostly following the European model suite, since the Mexican monsoonal fetch will have limited impacts above the border (thunderstorms mostly in Arizona and Nevada), and the cTw +mT regime may get into the Eastern Seaboard below Interstate 80. This does fit a stronger El Nino, and also could allow shortwaves to ride over top of the ridge with severe weather threats from Minnesota into the Interstate 95 corridor above Washington DC.