The heat (and humidity) is on!

Sunday's storms, which deposited a half-inch of rain in the gauge at the South Hill airport, were courtesy of a weak cold front passing through the area. Behind that boundary winds dew points dropped several degrees, resulting in today - Monday - beginning with drier air in place. Speaking of that, the dew point is a much better representation of that "sticky" feeling than relative humidity as illustrated in this graphic:

As the air warms it can hold more water vapor than cooler air. Relative humidity describes how much water vapor a particular air sample actually contains vs. how much it could contain. In the above example each box has a relative humidity of 50%, meaning each box contains only half the amount of moisture that it could at that temperature. The right-hand example, with a temperature of 95º and a dew point of 74º, would feel very tropical and oppressive since that air holds more overall moisture. The much cooler left-hand box wouldn't feel anywhere near that level of stickiness despite having the same relative humidity.

Temperatures which began this morning in the mid-60s around Mecklenburg County will climb into the upper 80s this afternoon. Yet another cold front pinwheeling around upper level low pressure over the Great Lakes region will edge into the county tonight. Thus clouds will roll back into the area this evening into the overnight hours, with showers and thunderstorms lasting into Tuesday.

Tomorrow will then feature mostly cloudy skies with morning showers and scattered afternoon thunderstorms. Temperatures will range from morning lows near 70º to afternoon highs in the mid-80s. The area is under a Marginal Risk - level 1 of 5 - for severe storms Tuesday, so remain weather aware. Clouds should thin enough to provide a peek at the sunset tomorrow, which will occur at 8:33 p.m.