MARQUETTE, Mich. (WJMN) – Sweltering heat is creeping its way further and further north with heat advisories and excessive heat warnings as close as Wisconsin.
The reason this has been happening is because of an area of high pressure that is sitting over the central United States.
“Essentially, there’s been a large area of high pressure that’s been parked over the central United States,” explained Joe Phillips, a Meteorologist at National Weather Service. “And this is more or less trapped the airmass that they were seeing there and because it’s not moving, it’s just getting hotter and hotter. It’s also trapped a lot of the humidity in the same area, as well. This high pressure hasn’t been moving much at all over the past couple of days and that’s because there’s other features across the Atlantic Ocean, across the Pacific, up in Alaska and Canada, that are kind of preventing that area of high pressure to move out of the way.”
While a large part of the central United States are seeing heat advisories and excessive heat warnings, the U.P. is sitting comfortably just north of humidity and heat indexes around and even over 100 degrees.
“There’s a number of reasons why the Upper Peninsula doesn’t see that kind of heat,” said Phillips. “This time of year, a lot of it has to do sun angle. We’re also seeing a number of air masses move through the area. At the same time, we also have Lake Superior and the other great lakes that do work to modulate some of the air masses especially near the lake shore. Together all of these work together to prevent too much of that heat from extending into our area.”
While some of the U.P. could see some warmer temperatures, it will be nothing like the states neighboring us to the south.
If you plan on traveling into these areas, make sure you stay hydrated and remember to cool off. Heat can be dangerous to pets, younger children, older adults, and at these sweltering temperatures, it can be dangerous to anyone.
