A comfortable start to the week, plus a wild weather anniversary

A backdoor front pushed through Mecklenburg County Sunday evening on its way south and west. The northeasterly breeze following that boundary will help today's - Monday's - afternoon highs top out only in the upper 80s under partly sunny skies. Dew points remain in the sticky range, with chances of a few scattered showers still possible today.

Those northeasterly breezes will usher in slightly cooler and less sticky air by this evening, such that local thermometers will begin Tuesday morning with readings in the mid-60s. Under mostly sunny skies tomorrow's highs will climb back to the 90º mark, just about average for late June. By Wednesday, however, temperatures look to boost well above summertime normal readings as a strong high pressure system builds a heat dome across the eastern half of the nation.

Such a heat dome was in place 14 years ago today, on June 29th 2012. That evening's weather phenomenon imprinted the term "derecho" onto the Virginian psyche. Here is a radar loop from that day:

And this graphic shows the wind damage along the path of that cluster of storms, which caused multi-day power outages during the hottest part of the summer of 2012:

At the moment there doesn't seem to be any threat from another derecho reaching the Old Dominion. However, the hot weather arriving later this week is not just typical summertime heat. It will be an extreme event, and folks would be wise to heed heat safety tips over the next several days. This is not weather hype. Heat kills more people on an annual basis than any other weather feature.