Wednesday brought another day of heat alerts for our region, and Thursday it looks like it will be about as hot. Wednesday brought another heat advisory to much of our region and again saw a few places under an excessive heat warning.
Yesterday we showed you (see the article below for a reminder) that heat is the number one cause of weather-related death. Not tornadoes. Not hurricanes. Not lightning. Heat.
As this is the hottest week of the year so far, with highs in the upper 90s yesterday, …
Yes, it is hot here every summer, but the level of heat we face this week is almost unprecedented. Let’s talk about what we’ve seen so far and why we can make such a bold claim.
The dew point graph above and the heat index below show you what has already been measured this week. Dew points soared into the upper 70s on Monday and Tuesday, and when you combine that with the heat, our heat index values peaked near 110º.
The humidity certainly made it worse, but the heat is really what should get your attention. Monday and Tuesday’s high and low temperatures broke heat records, and we’ll likely do it again on Wednesday (or at least get closer to the maximum). The asterisk below means that’s the temperature that was recorded as the lowest, but the National Weather Service needs to confirm if that’s the low or if we got a little colder between observations.
Other records will also be at risk next week, including low temperature tomorrow (Thursday) morning and high temperatures Tuesday and Wednesday of next week.
We can call this unprecedented heat because of all these broken records. Louisville has never experienced this level of heat at this point of the year. Has it ever been warmer? Sure! But not in mid-June. The highest temperature ever measured in Louisville was 107° and the highest known dew point is 83°. The only “all-time” record we came close to breaking this week was the hottest trough. The hottest low temperature measured in Louisville was 84º on August 19, 1936. Our low temperature on Tuesday morning, June 14, was 83º
We are not off the hook yet. A cold front will bring a brief pause to the heatwave. We expect highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s this weekend, but Monday brings the heat again. There are signals that next week’s heat could even climb higher than our temperatures this week.
We will continue to share forecast updates on your TV or streaming platform and here at wdrb.com.
