Steamy day to stop and smell the roses
Monday marks third straight day above 90 degrees
Sandy Boynton of Schenectady, left, and Carol Bergmeier of Fort Edward look at the roses in the Central Park Rose Garden on Monday in Schenectady. Monday was the third straight day at or above 90 degrees, putting the area into its first heat wave of the year.
Saturday was the first day of summer, so it should come as no surprise that the Capital Region is now in the first heat wave of the year.
“We just hit 90 degrees at 1 o’clock,” National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Villani said on Monday. With temperatures reaching 91 and 92 on Saturday and Sunday respectively, that meant there were officially three days of 90-and-above weather — which for this part of the world counts as a heat wave, said Villani.
The temperature late Monday afternoon at the Albany International Airport hit 95 degrees, which tied that day’s record set in 1954. But temperatures over the weekend were nowhere near the record, which hovered between 95 and 97 degrees for those dates.
But the heat wave might be broken Tuesday if temperatures do not hit 90; the forecast calls for a high of around 89.
Times Union forecaster Jason Gough added that the heat wave is coming pretty much on schedule for the start of summer.
And with dew points in the mid-60s, humidity has not been unbearable.
There is one twist looming at the start of this summer, at least for avid weather watchers — the massive Saharan dust plume heading toward North America.
Such plumes aren’t uncommon as summer trade winds blowing east to west near the equator pick up momentum with the heat.
Dust from the Sahara desert is lifted by the winds, rising up to 20,000 feet and heading west near the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic, where many hurricanes get their start.
Satellite images show this dust plume to be substantially larger than others.
It’s currently over the western Atlantic heading toward the Caribbean, the Gulf states and the Southeast later in the week.
But it will probably not affect the Capital Region in any substantial way. If it makes it to the Northeast it will likely be too high to have any health or visibility impacts, said Villani.
But the cloud could make for some unusually red or orange sunsets in coming days as it approaches from the southeast.
Weather patterns toward the weekend could also impact the extent to which we see remnants of the dust plume, said Dustin Grogan a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Albany’s Atmospheric Sciences Research Center.
There’s a possibility that a storm could approach the region from the north toward the weekend, which would likely wash out the dust particles, he explained.
“It really depends on some approaching weather,” he said.