July 22, 2026: Bertha Moves West | Flooding in VA/NC | HOT South, Cool North | PacNW Heat/Fires...

[00:00:00]Well, good morning everybody. Let me give you the midweek layout of the pattern here. We have our main front.

[00:00:03]This is a temperature change map over the last 24 hours. So, our main front has dug in through here.

[00:00:08]Uh we're going to watch a ridge open up into the northwest, which is when I actually going to bring up the heat quite a bit in the Pacific Northwest over the next couple of days. Coming back to the east though, along this frontal boundary, we are going to see the risk of very heavy rainfall getting into one of our driest spots in the country. I'm thinking about parts of southern Virginia getting into North Carolina. We've been monitoring drought there for the last oh gosh, about 120 days developing in this region.

[00:00:31]We also need to talk about what's going on uh with Bertha, the potential strength of Bertha going this direction toward the side of the Gulf Coast. And then the eventual return of heat coming back into the midsection of the country as the ridge just continues to reopen due to the uh lack of really any sort of stronger signal uh to the contrary. We just have low momentum and we tend to seem to be able to produce a lot of ridging events in the midsection of the country. I do have a different idea about August now though. And I I'm I'm going to show you that at the end. Um I'm not so sure the models are going to catch up, but maybe I can make a bit more sense out of Noah's forecast, which earlier in the week on Monday I was a bit confused by.

[00:01:09]So, we're going to get to all that here in the next few moments. First, our flow this morning, you can see the main frontal boundary here, and that is the circulation around Bertha. And uh we're just going to have to watch where these two how these two things interact over the next uh 48 hours, uh keeping Bertha pretty far to the south, but probably increasing the wind shear too much to allow Bertha to do much. If we step up a little bit in the atmosphere, this is now up to 850 millibars, where the uh this is the pressure at about a mile above our heads. And this will be a main focal point right in through here, as the much cooler air comes sandwiched into some flow that's coming out of the Gulf on Bertha's backside here, as you can see, and it's really going to concentrate the risk of heavier rain in through this region.

[00:01:53]If I go up a bit higher than that, you're going to see the the bigger picture of where that ridge is and this is what's opening up to a lot of the heat into the Pacific Northwest. And that we're going to watch to see how this high pressure cell that's just sitting in the midsection of the country again is a part of the steering current keeping Bertha largely away from shore.

[00:02:12]Now that doesn't mean it won't have onshore effects from Bertha but it's keeping it from just zipping up right into the you know South Central United States here. All right. We do need to continue to watch the rest of the Atlantic going forward. I think the Pacific is just going to be a machine for generating tropical cyclones. This is a Fausto right here moving out. Uh but I'm going to have to watch the Atlantic this year has been very high across the Atlantic so far this season and I think it's going to continue to be a problem as we try to think about the development of tropical systems as we go forward.

[00:02:42]All right, on satellites uh the sun's just rising here so I'm going to take you back to last night. This is just what we're seeing on our new satellite product. By the way, how do you find this? We're going to make it more prominent. It's just our beta version of this but if you go to weather.com, all right, and you come over to um you know to radar or you can even search for it actually. You can just search for satellite. But right now we've tucked it in our radar page until we make it more prominent and it's here. Just just click right uh there on satellite and you'll be able to see this. Now what I did was I came down to the Gulf Coast and I'm leaving it on true color. There you can see the sun just now rising down there.

[00:03:16]But if I lengthen this out to 250 frames, I can go back and watch all of yesterday as well.

[00:03:21]And it's kind of neat to watch Matt picked up on this that the main convection is separate from the surface circulation and that is that's what we talk about when we're talking about shear. Okay, so this this system is kind of pulled apart by that uh by the the shear wind shear in the in the Gulf. Uh basically creating this this difference here. There's multiple other things going on but I think that's the mainstay of it. And uh we're going to have to see how close this comes to you know to the the southern parishes in uh in Louisiana as it goes forward And I a lot of questions on Monday's video from me about how this gets into Texas.

[00:03:56]Well, let's kind of get in there and get some answers.

[00:03:58]This is the newest update. In fact, let's refresh this. Um I'm about ready to release this to you all. I'm pretty excited uh about our new uh tropical product here. But this is the latest we've got on Bertha, 52 mph, 63 mph gusts. Keeping this at tropical storm status, you can see here that the National Hurricane Center's cone uh brings it right in through this area.

[00:04:18]All right, so pretty consistent all week. And the tool I built there's a couple of things. I turned off all the models except for the National Hurricane Center forecast. If I throw them all back on, we can now see the you know, the 7-day outlook. So, if I take this back and play it forward, this is a blend of every model we've got looking at uh you know, the potential tracks. So, a little bit more organized.

[00:04:40]Now we can see why the NHC cone is the way it is. But remember, the width of the National Hurricane Center cone is dependent on their historical forecast uh accuracy. So, it it it encapsulates that accuracy. It's not based upon these models.

[00:04:55]Uh but anyways, this is uh this is what we're looking at.

[00:04:58]I put on here the ability to click on an intensity chart. So, it kind of shows you you know, where we expect the strength of this to be. And for the most part, outside of a couple of forecast ensemble members here, the the general consensus is to keep this a tropical storm degrading it over the next 2 days to a tropical depression. So, we can kind of see that just real quick there in in the forecast.

[00:05:20]And I think that's what it's going to do. You know, outside of that, uh where are we watching for developments? It's It's here in the uh you know, the East Pacific where we have Fausto right now, uh which is uh you know, basically moving its way out toward Hawaii. We should go have a look at that though. If we flip it over to Fausto here, uh let's go and take everything off again. You can see expected to maintain its hurricane status as it approaches Hawaii.

[00:05:44]Uh if we toss all the models back on there, uh we can just see Let's watch the forecast track. Usually these systems curl north of Hawaii or die before they get there. Some of the ensemble track members are taking, you know, fast toward Hawaii, which could be very important to watch for the total rainfall there. Intensity-wise, expecting to keep this as a Cat 1, maybe a brief stint in Cat 2, but then bringing it back down to tropical storm status the farther to the you know, to the west that it goes.

[00:06:12]So, that's what we're looking at. These are two systems to be keeping an eye on here that are impacting the United States over the next next several days.

[00:06:21]Okay, did want to show you winds. Now, this is the high-res NAM predicting wind gusts going forward here. And the strongest winds are offshore. In fact, I had a couple of guys contact me about offshore fishing trips that they had planned. I'm like, I'd cancel. This is going to be very choppy sea here with these potential wind gusts getting up 60, 70, 80 mph. Now, these are gusts.

[00:06:43]Remember, we measure the strength of a tropical system off of its sustained wind, and these are modeled gusts, not you know, forecast. This is not what's actually being observed. But, that's where we're expecting the strongest winds to move.

[00:06:56]So, it's the southern parishes they're getting right over here into parts of, you know, Houston and surrounding locations from Port Arthur, even getting farther down here to the south.

[00:07:06]Looking at wind gusts 40 to 50 mph possible as this comes rolling through.

[00:07:11]If you're curious about rainfall, I did look at all the models this morning and it seems because of the disconnect with the heaviest or the deepest convection is in the center of circulation, we're keeping most of the very very heavy rainfall to on its southern side. And so, this is just looking at the newest WPC forecast.

[00:07:29]And I'll be honest, you play this out, that's a full week and we we're not seeing heavy rainfall from this getting into Texas despite the low pressure cell making it likely here and still maintaining tropical depression status.

[00:07:41]That's that depression refers to the pressure nothing else, okay?

[00:07:46]Uh that's the WPC forecast. Uh quickly, here's the European model forecast. And we can flip this over to the GFS.

[00:07:54]And most of these models are keeping the heaviest rains out to open ocean, not bringing them um very far inland. Uh but could be right in the southern parishes we see the the wettest conditions, all right?

[00:08:06]Uh I wanted to also show you yesterday in the northeast. Let's just take you back. Deep convection along that main frontal boundary starting off on the Ohio River then dipping through, you know, parts of Kentucky building to the northeast. This would mark, you know, the third or maybe fourth day uh in the last week or so we've seen big storms erupting here uh across pockets of the uh the Mid-Atlantic into the northeast then back over toward West Virginia and the headwaters of the Ohio River. Just wanted to show you that on satellite. It is nice to see much clearer air on the backside of this, no more deep smoke infiltration as those fires in southern Ontario, southwestern Ontario have been um have been reduced significantly going forward.

[00:08:47]And one of the thing just to kind of bring up here, this is the last 24 hours of severe weather reports. If I bring this back to the last 7 days and just stay focused on, you know, the northeast here. We've had um you know, a lot of severe weather reports, 42 tornado reports across the country, but a lot of severe weather reports here and I was watching uh just some social media feeds yesterday of some of the tornadoes in Pennsylvania uh yesterday. So I wanted to kind of keep you aware of this just ongoing uh risk of severe storms. It's going to be sliding down farther to the south today, but we've been hit pretty hard into this area as of late.

[00:09:19]Okay, northwest. Let's get you back to yesterday. I did want to just have another look at we had large fires early in the week in Washington and we can still see some of that lingering smoke.

[00:09:29]Very active monsoonal storms getting all the way up here into, you know, the Payette National Forest, Salmon River Valley uh coming into parts of Idaho. Uh deeper convection on the southern rim uh here of the Snake River Valley as well.

[00:09:42]Uh but that smoke, well, let's just go have a look at the latest forecast of it. You're going to see it's tracing out the frontal boundary very well east, but we're expecting to continue to see the wildfire smoke, you know, here throughout Washington and Oregon, getting into Montana, uh throughout the next uh 48 hours or so.

[00:09:59]All right, that gets us to kind of bigger picture things. And I I just wanted to bring your attention to our five-model spread here uh on AccuWeather website, just our weather maps. And I'm looking overall for consistency in what they're thinking for the monsoon, which most models are pretty consistent in its placement. And this, we've seen the models toy around with bringing in wetter conditions into this area.

[00:10:21]And as we know, if we just slide back up to the top here and go to just our main site, we are watching rain coming out of South Dakota into Nebraska this morning, while this frontal boundary stalls out right here over parts of Virginia and North Carolina later on today.

[00:10:37]If we just think about the broader picture over the next 10 days, this is our probability of staying under a half inch, you know, we're seeing where the ridge rebuilds, relatively high probabilities here of staying dry. But monsoonal storms moving more to the front range, that's going to be critical, I think, in Colorado. You're going to have to watch multiple days of the risk of bigger storms just popping off the mountains here, creating local flash flooding. I love seeing better moisture getting into Wyoming. I know several of you comment in the videos that from Wyoming.

[00:11:05]We need these isolated storms to come through, but this quadrant through here continues to show up wetter. Farther to the south, still very dry into central Texas. Remembering though, you know, last week we dealt with tremendous amounts of flooding here. And uh we're going to be wetter up the East Coast, especially watching into this area later on today. All right?

[00:11:23]So, right now, all hazards map uh this morning, we do have the flash flood watches that run up and down the spine of the Rockies. We have the tropical storm warnings that are along the coast.

[00:11:33]Uh and then you get into the interior.

[00:11:34]This is all extreme heat warnings surrounded by heat advisories. And all that's gone though here because of the much cooler weather that's come in. But we'll need to keep an eye on the flooding potential here as these storms just kind of line out and train over one another for the next 24 hours or so.

[00:11:50]Into the coastal parts of California, this has been a bit of a rarity this year to see heat advisories. It's been actually quite cool this summer.

[00:11:56]And then to the Pacific Northwest where that heat is going, there's heat advisories out there. Quality issues which are expected as that ridge begins to open right in through here.

[00:12:06]So this is kind of where our pattern's taken us. And we're going to watch this ridge open back into the midsection of the country. But I've got questions about the longevity of that into August.

[00:12:14]And that's going to be critical. Uh kind of today is my first view of this signal. I'm sure others have picked up on it earlier. Uh but we need to get in there and talk about it, okay?

[00:12:25]Okay. Start off with our forecast of simulated radar. A decent initialization where we were on um on Monday. Much better her initialization. Which means playing through later today, coming through Omaha, we're going to watch some storms.

[00:12:41]There's your southwest monsoon just opening again to our you know, just distribution of storms throughout the Intermountain West. And there's our frontal boundary stalling out into parts of Virginia and uh North Carolina.

[00:12:53]As I watch this, this is through this afternoon this evening. We're getting into the overnight hours. There are repeated rounds of storms coming in through this area. And it's been very, very dry in this area. So we're going to be concerned about the risk of flash flooding with this.

[00:13:07]And that could be around all the way through tomorrow afternoon and evening, siding farther to the south.

[00:13:13]In parts of South Carolina, North Carolina, but I mean much, much needed rains. But let's kind of broaden this back out and just get a bigger picture of where we were coming back to this evening.

[00:13:24]Getting into the overnight hours tonight.

[00:13:27]and then into tomorrow.

[00:13:29]You see how the models just took whatever was left of of um Bertha and not really delivering it into parts of Texas. I think that's a critical thing to watch.

[00:13:39]Uh but that's it. That's our high resolution kind of forecast of where this thing is expected to go.

[00:13:44]All right, bigger picture. Let's watch the jet stream.

[00:13:47]>> [clears throat] >> Normally, I compare different modeling suites. So, like European versus GFS. Uh today we're going to look at the European ensemble. So, this is a 51-member ensemble versus the operational European run. And we're looking at jet stream level winds.

[00:14:02]And just playing this forward, okay?

[00:14:03]You'll see that into the weekend and early next week both models reopen that ridge back into the central US. That's been pretty well forecast as has trough uh troughs of low pressure coming into this area. I like it. You see that the operational run on the right looks very much like the the ensemble [clears throat] blend uh on the left. But that's through um Sunday.

[00:14:27]We take it out in early next week. Matt talked a lot about the position of where this trough is going to develop east.

[00:14:35]And the reason we have to talk about that is because normally we think about oh look, the flow's coming out of the northwest. It should be stormy. But that that's really when you anchor a flatter, broader ridge over the southwest that you get those ridge riders. As Matt mentioned, there's a lot of flow that's kind of coming in out of the north, which tends to be drier and not deliver, you know, the the the big chances for getting the rainfall that come through.

[00:14:59]And then the farther we go out there in the pattern, if we just kind of zoom out, you start to see that same old 5,000-m separation standing wave. Can you kind of see it now? It's messier over in the operational run.

[00:15:14]But I I it seems to be the way that this month wants to finish.

[00:15:18]What I want to know about farther into the month of August is how does that standing wave play out?

[00:15:25]Okay, let's just take it all the way out there. That's as far out as the model forecast can go.

[00:15:30]And are there some shifts in the tropics that could disrupt this wave further into the month of August?

[00:15:38]Potentially breaking that ridge down and redistributing its its momentum or its lack of momentum. Let me get back to that in just a few seconds for you. In the near term, let's stay on this European ensemble versus European operational run looking at total precipitation.

[00:15:54]And so as anticipated, we've got this feature going all the way into southern Illinois possibly linking up with the frontal boundary delivering the very heavy rainfall into this area. We could see some places picking up 5 to 6 plus inches of rainfall across our drought region here.

[00:16:11]All right. Now, that just gets you through this weekend.

[00:16:14]Playing into next week, more monsoonal activity, the East Pacific gets going again, but you'll notice that we're not really adding much moisture here and we're certainly keeping it dry Texas, Oklahoma where we've also seen such excessive heat as of late.

[00:16:29]And that's what I'm thinking. Are we going to be able to really deliver moisture here on northwest flow or is the problem going to be it's too much out of the north and the northwest and you're not getting the ridge riding nature of those storms? In other words, we're we're keeping the gulf from really opening its moisture into this region.

[00:16:45]The other thing I point out here is there's a lot of storm activity expected in the models along and just off the front range. Keep a close eye on that if you're in those areas cuz we can get major late summer flash flooding out of that. Now, I'd like to be able to show you these two models comparing precipitable water, but I don't do that with the European ensemble. So, let me just flip this over to the operational GFS and let's now go show you some precipitable water. Now, remember, this is kind of our idea on where is there moisture and where is there dry? And look, see that? That's the GFS. Are you're going, "Well, the Euro's got it." Well, just watch. We just keep playing it out. The Euro's trying to deliver their little bit before it drier air into this region.

[00:17:26]So, I think I think that's what's going to be key if you're in those spots trying to figure out if you're going to get rain.

[00:17:31]And fully into week two, we see the models showing up again with drier in this area, drier into Texas, seasonally dry in the Pacific Northwest, and tucked in the middle, you have your monsoonal storms. And then, I do continue to expect to see the Southeast staying wet.

[00:17:47]Um I'll be down here for this. I'm heading down here at the end of the month for a big event uh down in uh in Southern Georgia, Northern Florida. And I think I'm going to bring in with me some showers and storms uh possible at least in the in the time following that.

[00:18:01]Now, this is what I'm beginning to question. Look at the Euro. Is there any difference? We've shown you this I don't know. We show it to you every video, but this is that August view.

[00:18:11]And it looks no different from any other forecast I've given you for August.

[00:18:15]Monsoon, wetter up the East Coast, especially into the interior. And we just see the drier signal there.

[00:18:21]Now, why I continue to question this is because the MJO is right now in phase eight.

[00:18:27]That makes a ton of sense.

[00:18:29]But, the new forecasts are trying to sweep this out and bring it back over to phase six.

[00:18:35]Now, we I'll be honest, I don't typically rely on MJO in the heart of summer in the Northern Hemisphere for the Northern Hemisphere weather pattern.

[00:18:43]And the reason is teleconnections are just weak in summer. They're just very weak. The flow is weak. The momentum is gone. So, why would we use this? This is a momentum-generating thing. We're like, "Oh, the MJO is doing something that's going to reposition momentum." But, in summer, that's hard to come by.

[00:18:59]But, I want to show you this.

[00:19:02]In phase eight, where we are now in July, okay? Where do we get troughs? Here.

[00:19:07]Where do we see ridges? There. Where do we have troughs? There. See this?

[00:19:11]Look at that. Ridges there as well.

[00:19:13]So, we've talked about that European heat wave. The France major major loss of of crop across France due to heat and excessive drought. I mean, so much of this is making sense. We're in phase eight.

[00:19:25]But, you saw the models in August want to take things to phase six.

[00:19:31]And now you tend to get this.

[00:19:34]That makes Spain France stormy.

[00:19:38]That drives troughs into this area making it stormy and cool.

[00:19:43]This brings more heat to the west as the Pacific ridge lives back into the Gulf of Alaska.

[00:19:48]So, I'm I'm only saying this because I'm I was trying to figure out like that Climate Prediction Center forecast.

[00:19:55]See that?

[00:19:57]And if we look out here, sorry.

[00:20:00]And we get we truly get into a phase six in August.

[00:20:05]All right. Okay. I I get it. I think the National Weather Service saw this before me, and I'll be curious uh if we do in fact get this pattern.

[00:20:14]One thing is for sure, um you know, the velocity potential map from the European model, right? It's It's had these, you know, just living in the Pacific for a while as El Niño develops.

[00:20:26]And you know, they kind of wash out, but it's still it's a it's a there's some phase six in this, phase seven, but it's definitely out in the Pacific.

[00:20:35]Um one thing we do know for certain is look at the zonal winds.

[00:20:38]I'll get this to load relatively quickly. We are We are We are going to be chasing a lot of discussion around, you know, how this El Niño develops. I'll give that another moment to to load.

[00:20:49]But, wow, there is no stopping this thing. We have got major surges just recently, and major surge focused uh in the forecast here for strong zonal winds.

[00:21:00]But, okay.

[00:21:02]This has been a mainstay of conversation, the lack of momentum here.

[00:21:05]But, you start to see this?

[00:21:08]That would be interesting. It's 15 days from now, and there's a bit of a pick up in momentum, I don't know, 45 north.

[00:21:14]That's going to be worth watching.

[00:21:16]Okay, let's see if this loaded. There we go. Look at those trade winds. Just reversed. Very strong. Nothing slowing them down.

[00:21:24]Okay, that brings me to the last point, temperatures. This is where we've been so far this year.

[00:21:29]Excuse me, this summer, uh month of July.

[00:21:31]Extremely hot in this arc. Right in through here as the ridge has opened and and stayed open.

[00:21:37]But, we've now knocked that back. This is the frontal boundary that just came through. Still very hot in south, across the south. Very hot in the Pacific Northwest, Central Valley. Cooler than average.

[00:21:47]So, that's today, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So, we have a multi-day cool down here.

[00:21:55]And then the heat just comes surging back in as the ridge reopens. It never really leaves the panhandle, as the Red River, the south. We just maintain the colder, excuse me, the much hotter weather down there.

[00:22:05]We then go out there to the This is Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Just very hot in the middle part of the country.

[00:22:11]And the question is, how long is that going to last?

[00:22:14]Now, on the left, I have the European ensemble, and on the right, I have the operational run. This is a 5-day anomaly. So, there's the next 5 days.

[00:22:25]That's the heat rebuilding, owning the Central Plains, cool down in the Northwest, still hot in the interior of the west. Last holdout for cooler weather is going to be the Mid-Atlantic down to the Carolinas.

[00:22:34]We then go beyond this into early August.

[00:22:37]And the models are doing this.

[00:22:40]You can see the ECMWF has got, you know, some sense of cooler weather here. The ensemble has got cooler weather here overall.

[00:22:46]Um and so, I'm I'm also wondering, like, what if I flip this over to the GFS ensemble?

[00:22:53]And look at that.

[00:22:54]So, all right, Noah, are we doing this for the front half of August.

[00:23:04]I I can I can now see it. If this is what your your discussions are talking about, uh you know, what you're talking about internally, okay. Let's see if we do get this type of pattern with the MJO squeezing over back here into phase six for a bit.

[00:23:19]That could be interesting.

[00:23:21]One thing I do know is that if we keep doing this though, August typically the start of a big start of hurricane season, man, we're not this is not going to be a hurricane generating pattern all. It's going to keep that shear too high.

[00:23:33]So, let's uh let's just monitor it throughout the rest of the week and then next week and see if it's consistent.

[00:23:38]But, with that I'll shut it down and uh Matt will pick it back up tomorrow morning. Have a good one everybody.

[00:23:42]Thanks.