The region may be getting some significant drought relief during the weekend, and then it may be some time before it gets relief from heat that could persist through July Fourth.
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Rounds of showers — possible Friday night into Saturday evening when Croatia and Ghana meet in a World Cup match in South Philly — should be more widespread across the region than Monday’s scattershot downpours, said Brian Hurley, senior branch forecaster with the Weather Prediction Center, in College Park, Md.
The severe storms likely would stay well to the south of Washington, D.C. However, “you always have potential” for a few thunderstorms, he said.
Then, after two decent days Sunday and Monday, what is looking like the longest-lasting hot spell of the season to date is due to get underway Tuesday as temperatures head to the mid-90s.
“Thats going to be main story,” said Hurley.
The wild card for the duration would be the possibility of “ring of fire” thunderstorms, forecasters said, which might have temporary cooling effects. Those are storms that form along the boundaries of high-pressure heat domes, and Philly may be near the eastern edge.
How hot might it get next week in Philly?
Expect some tweaking during the next few days, but with “increasing confidence” the National Weather Service in Mount Holly was seeing heat indexes in the triple figures next week.
Come Tuesday, daytime temperatures should be “off to the races,” said Bill Deger, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., which has forecast highs up to 98 degrees late in the workweek.
It also will be steamy, and that will inhibit nighttime cooling as water vapor slows the escape of daytime warning. Readings are unlikely to get lower than the 70s Wednesday through at least next Saturday.
The heat could lap into the following week, said Deger. “It shows some staying power,” he said.
The region already has had 14 days with official temperatures of 90 or higher in 2026, about half the average total for an entire year.
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The potential for those ring-of-fire storms would be a wild card, said Hurley and Deger.
Cooling thunderstorms can break heat waves, although they may come with a price. Ring-of-fire storms in July of 2020 wrung out as much as 6 inches of rain that off widespread flooding.
As drought continues, the Philly region could use more rain
Six inches might be a bit over the top, but the region could use more rain to ease the ongoing drought conditions.
Some areas received close to 2 inches on Monday and Tuesday; however, the jackpot zones eluded areas where the dry conditions have been most intense — parts of South Jersey and Chester County.
The entire region remained in some state of drought according to the inter-agency U.S. Drought Monitor, but Chester County was in “severe drought,” along with small pieces of Bucks and Delaware Counties. In “extreme drought” were all of Cape May County, other Jersey Shore towns, and areas bordering Delaware Bay.
In an analysis based on a network of measuring stations throughout the counties, the weather service’s Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center calculated that Cape May County received less than a half inch of rain, and Cumberland and Salem Counties about 0.6 inches.
In contrast, Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester Counties weighed in with well over an inch.
On the other side of the river, Philly’s total was 1.28 inches, compared with 0.71 for Chesco, which like New Jersey is under a state-declared drought emergency.
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All this could change next week.
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