Pleasant weather holds on before heat builds this weekend

Staying Comfortable:

If you enjoyed yesterday's refreshing weather, you will love what's in store for today. High pressure remains firmly in control across the area, leaving conditions quiet and comfortable. Expect a mix of clouds and sun with temperatures peaking once again below-average, in the upper 70s. Similar to yesterday, this will make for another pleasant summer afternoon for any outdoor activities. 

Clouds will increase somewhat overnight as a weak upper-level disturbance slides in. While this feature may be enough to squeeze out a stray sprinkle or very light shower early in the day, rain chances should stay quite low as we wrap up the work week. Overall, the pleasant stretch of weather continues into Friday with a mix of clouds and sun, afternoon highs near the 80-degree mark, and comfortable humidity. In fact, dew points will remain in the upper 50s, making for another refreshing summer day.  

Warmer Weekend:

Moving forward to the weekend, we'll begin to see a ridge of high pressure strengthen across the central plains and Midwest. That, combined with a return to southwest surface winds, will allow summer heat and humidity to gradually build back into northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Temperatures will wind up back in the low 80s Saturday, with highs in the 90s scheduled for Sunday and Monday.  

Heat and humidity set to return by the weekend

 The cool and comfortable weather is a welcomed sight while it lasts, but humidity will be back in the picture by the weekend. Wednesday morning's low temperatures ranged from the low to upper 50s, while the afternoon only returned to the mid-70s.

A building ridge of high pressure across the Western and Central United States will push an increasingly warm and humid air mass our direction through the weekend. The Northwest flow in the jet stream overhead will quell some of that in the near term, but the spreading heat dome will win out by Sunday.

As a result, afternoon high temperatures will keep climbing each day, reaching into the 80s by Friday and Saturday, then 90s Sunday and Monday. Humidity will also accompany the heat, with dew point temperatures pushing well into the 70s. Heat index could approach the triple digits again by Sunday. That will also begin to fuel some isolated to widely scattered thunderstorm chances, but a large majority of the area will remain dry on any given day.

The pattern of Western U.S. ridging will remain locked in place for a bit longer. The long-term outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center continue to feature above average temperatures for much of the country, including a slight lean toward warmer than average for the Upper Midwest. This would take us into the first few days in August. That ridge will flatten a little bit into early August, but most days look to be on the warmer side until at least then.

Cool and comfortable across northern Illinois moving forward

Air Quality Update:

After battling hazardous and unhealthy air quality at times late last week and again on Monday, conditions have improved dramatically across the area. In fact, Tuesday's air quality was what the doctor ordered, with most Stateline locales spending most of the day in the "good" to "moderate" range. The good news is set to continue as the air quality index (AQI) both to start our Wednesday and for this afternoon is expected to remain near or below 50. 

Much Cooler Wednesday:

If that news wasn't enough, how about improvements in the temperature department? That's right. The cool air filtering in behind Monday's cold front will be sitting directly overhead today, limiting afternoon highs to the low 70s. This is below late-July standards and much cooler than last Wednesday. Today's cooler weather does come with a dry outlook as an area of high pressure sits close to the Stateline.  

Staying Cool:

After dropping into the low 50s overnight, we can expect this cooler-than-average weather to stay put for Thursday and Friday. A wind change to the south and southwest will bring afternoon highs up a few degrees, landing us in the upper 70s Thursday and then back near-seasonable Friday. The only chance for rain we are tracking during this stretch is on Friday and it's a very slim chance. Chances should remain slim through Saturday.      

Pair of cold fronts usher in cooler and pleasant stretch

 This morning's cold front resulted in a few of the storms we saw during the day yesterday but has since settled well South of the area. It is now producing severe weather across the Ohio River Valley into the Northeast. Our second cold front in 18 hours will slide overhead this evening, and that one will be the main driver behind the cooler more comfortable air ahead.

A cold front is typically associated with cooler temperatures but can also bring drier air with it. We will get both behind this front, with dew points settling into the low 50s for a couple days amid strong Canadian high pressure!

The drier air will result in some very pleasant and cool nights ahead, especially for July standards. Typical lows are in the mid-60s, but a couple nights will be in the mid-50s starting tonight! We keep the comfortable air through Friday night, but humidity and summertime heat will soon return by the weekend. Enjoy the pleasantly cool weather while it lasts!

The tropics are stirring: Bertha forms in the gulf

 

The tropics are beginning to wake up as we head into the early portions of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season as the second storm has been named which is Bertha! The storm reached Tropical Storm status yesterday evening as it'd developed slowly off the Gulf Coast states. As of now the system is quite disorganized and is not expected to gain much strength.

 

Through the week this tropical system will slowly meander westward across the Gulf Coast States bringing heavy rainfall to coastal locations in those states. The good news is that this system is not expected to gain much strength thanks to slightly cooler sea surface temperatures along with some upper-level shear that will slightly tear apart this system over the next few days.

Even without much intensification expected, Tropical Storm Warning's and Watches are in place across portions of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. As noted previously impacts thankfully will stay on the lighter side however near the coastline in states impacted wind gusts may reach up to 50 mph while storm surge along the coast will only rise to 1 to 3 feet. The biggest impact from this system actually looks to be rainfall especially for coastal cities, some areas locally may see 1-2" of rain.

This system is right on track when it comes to the timing of our second named year of the season. We expect our second system to be named by July 17th so we are only a few days behind that, but sometimes we can see systems like Beryl back in 2024. Looking back, not only was that a strong system but considering how early in the year it formed it truly was an anomalous storm.

Now we're only starting the Atlantic Hurricane Season and although not much can be predicted this far out, it's good to see that the season isn't running out the gate to start! We are still right near average with our named storms by this time of year and although many of these names will be used, hopefully we won't be mentioning the word "major" when describing them later this year.