Soaring Heat Index Values with Latest Heat Wave

It's been warm the past two days with the high temperature reaching the middle and upper 80's, but the difference between Monday and today, and late last week has been the humidity! 

Highs Thursday and Sunday reached the low to mid 90's, but look at the highest heat index readings for those days!  Either at or above 110 degrees.  And if you ask me, Sunday definitely felt hotter than Thursday.  Even when the temperature didn't reach the 90's Friday and Saturday we still had a high heat index.

That was all due to the extremely high amounts of moisture we had in the atmosphere.  Dew points over the weekend and late last week didn't drop below the middle 70's.  In fact, the highest dew point reading in Rockford was 81 degrees at 7pm on Sunday!  Big time yuck! 

According to the National Weather Service, a dew point of 81 degrees or higher has only been observed on 22 hourly observations since 1970!  The last time Rockford recorded a dew point of 81 degrees or higher was back on August 2nd, 2011.  The highest dew point ever recorded was 83 degrees back on July 13th, 1995. 

Looking out into the extended and we could be in store for another round of heat, but not lasting quite as long.  More on that to come in a later post!