Earliest Heat Advisory in Decades | PIX11 Forecast Focus

Ajouté : 2026-05-20

[00:00:14]This is Pix 11 forecast focus with Mike Masco.

[00:00:18]>> All right, the big heat. That's the big weather focus and of course what everybody's talking about across the tri-state area. We're staying with the heat. H yesterday broke my heart. I'm going to explain why I always say when we get this abnormal heat and we start talking about it and we're putting the weather alerts and blah blah blah blah blah. Let's hit some records. Let's hit some note noteworthy events. Let's how about call it the first heat wave of the year in New York City. Now, I'm a very literal person. So, when we say heat wave, it has to mean something. I I have to be able to qualify it and and quantify it, right? Yesterday hit 88 degrees in Central Park.

[00:01:03]If it went to 90, I know we're going 90 plus today and tomorrow. We would have had our first heat wave of the year. In fact, it would have been one of the earliest heat waves uh for New York City.

[00:01:14]Can't call it a heat wave. Now, Newark will call it a heat wave. Everybody else except for Central Park because of the winds coming in off the East River yesterday, wind transport coming off the ocean. Uh we did get into kept us only into the 80s. So all right, we're not hitting a heat wave. Nonetheless, today is the real core of the heat. We have heat advisories. This is noteworthy. I found this to be noteworthy. This is the earliest the National Weather Service in Central Park has put out a heat advisory in 30 years. Um so it is a bit abnormal.

[00:01:49]Um especially before Memorial Day weekend. Usually post Memorial Day weekend, we get into the into um June, especially into July. If it was July, this wouldn't be such a a big deal. Um but it's May, right? It's May 19th. So, first in 30 years. Philadelphia first in I think 26 years. Um going back to all going all the way back to when they put out heat alerts. So, that's noteworthy.

[00:02:16]heat advisory, five burrows, most of New Jersey with the exception of of north and west of uh of I 80 to Sussex County.

[00:02:23]I think some of those hiller hillier communities will hold on to some coolness, but not much. I mean, everybody's going 90s. Now, the health element to this, and there is a health element, and I couldn't say this on the morning show, asthmaic people, uh if you suffer uh suffer of allergies, um excuse me, asthma suff sufferers, uh any fine particullet, this is going to be an issue today. And we we were showing on some of the sky cams this morning on the morning show of just really really ugly looking um ugly looking air that's just sitting at ground level. So, ground ozone is going to be a big deal today.

[00:03:00]So, air quality alerts for good reason.

[00:03:02]Fairfield County, Westchester, all of northeast New Jersey, right along the Garden State Parkway, right along the Turnpike and then 287 Quarter into Middle Sex County and then the Parkway South. All of Mammoth and Ocean counties involved in the air quality alert today.

[00:03:18]All right. Are we going for a record today? The answer is the answer is split.

[00:03:23]Could we overachieve today in Central Park? Yeah. I mean, could we hit 99 degrees at the park? Sure. The problem with this time of the year is that everything has to be perfect. I mean, stars aligning and then all of a sudden a comet zips across the sky. That type of an alignment because we are Manhattan is an island, right? We got the Hudson, we got the East River, we got uh the Atlantic off to the south, got the Hudson River up beyond that. You have Long Island Sound to the far uh northeast quarter. Any wind coming off any of those bodies of water that sit into the 50s and 60s right now is going to put the kibos on any kind of record temperatures. 99 is a big bar to hit. I mean, that's what is that 1962 hit 99 on this day. I'm forecasting 96.

[00:04:14]I don't think we get there. But if we get there, it has to be because of a very strong westerly wind. That's the only way we do it. And I just don't think we're going to do that. I think there's going to be a south wing component. We're going to drag some uh maritime air off the Sandy Hook Bay and then that puts the kibash and everything. Could Newark hit 98 99 today and break the 1962 record? I think so. I mean, Newark has always run hot. It's And you got to remember it's sitting literally off the runway at Newark International. I mean, hello. uh that you want to talk heat island effect and a little artificial temperature, that's a little artificial when you have that much concrete surrounding an observation plot. They do a really good job um regulating that observation plot, but nonetheless, you're always going to be a degree or two um more artificial than reality because there's just so much asphalt being absorbed or absorbing that solar radiation. Uh JFK, don't think so.

[00:05:11]You're just too close to the ocean.

[00:05:13]Bridgeport too close to the sound, but again, westerly wind, Bridgeport could skyrocket and so could Icelip mid island. So there's our Bermuda high. Um notice it's starting to pull apart. You could see that pretty closely on the 850 mibar temperatures. Look how it gets very elongated. That means it's pulling apart and eventually it's just going to dissipate totally. We're still getting flu flexing its muscles on the western periphery and that's why we're getting so hot today and tomorrow. But there's your change. Was looking at numbers this morning in Bismar at 28 degrees and Dallas Fort Worth was 83 at I believe 5:00 in the morning. So that is a huge uh contrast of temperature. So you can see the obvious trough of low pressure coming into the northern plains. And you can even see thunderstorm development.

[00:06:03]Uh yesterday really nasty severe weather across Kansas City. You could see this blow up of storm activity this afternoon. You could see another appendage of storms off to the south.

[00:06:13]The only thing that I'm I'm curious on and I go back and forth with when I was forecasting this morning is are we going to see a cohesive, you know, area of thunderstorm growth and development, storm initiation we call it. Are we going to see that tomorrow afternoon or is it going to be kind of fragmented where one batch of storms goes down to Philly, one batch sits up in the Hudson Valley and then everything kind of dissipates and competes against one another? It's called storm splintering, storm splitting. Um, I've seen that a lot here in the tri-state area. So, that's my only curiosity. That's why I'm not I'm not going, you know, too crazy on storm uh severe storms tomorrow, but I still think there is some probability there. There's your storm focus today.

[00:06:56]The big weather focus from in terms of immediate storm activity is going to be from Cincinnati and the Ohio Valley, a swath all the way down towards Dallas, Fort Worth. And you can see that line.

[00:07:05]It's pretty nasty line of storms that's going to race through uh North Texas.

[00:07:10]That's going to cause some ground stoppage at Dallas Fort Worth. So, just take notice of that if you have travel plans today or tonight. You might have some delays because everything a lot of stuff goes through Dallas. If you're going to the West Coast and you have a stopover Cleveland to Cincinnati and Columbus, keep an eye as well for possible ground stoppage if you're traveling. All right, here's the forecast. And one thing, first off, the numbers are the numbers, right? It's hot. It's hot. It's hot. It's hot. Um, what the model is trying to pick up on is just some isolated stuff trying to to boil over with the daytime heating. I think most of that's north of the Tapenzee Bridge. Okay. Uh, but that's it. There's not much fanfare with today.

[00:07:53]Tomorrow morning, as early as 5 o'clock in the morning, Stacy and Gooden does the uh 4 to uh 7 am show and I do the 7 to 10 on Pixel 11 Morning News. Um there is she's probably going to be showing almost 80°ree weather. And when you start that hot, it doesn't take much. By 10:00, I think we could go to 90 degrees in New York City. So that's why we're keeping the forecast reflective of lower 90s and middle 90s before all the storms start to boil over. We have a trigger, a better trigger, stronger trigger in the atmosphere with a trough line trying to slice into northwest New Jersey and the Hudson Valley as early as 3:00. So when you look at the model, you could see all this noise starting to develop by the afternoon. And let me just go back here and see if I could show this to you in a better way. I didn't put a pause point here, but I'm going to stop it here and I want to show you what I just was mentioning about um let me see if I can pull that up again. Where is it? Where is it? Here it is. I wanted to show you what I meant by how storms can kind of split apart a little bit. Here's 430.

[00:09:03]Watch how boom. All of a sudden, the the the activity shuts down across the city and Nassau and Suffach County. And then you see storms exploding across central New Jersey. That's my only thing that I'm concerned with is that you have storms that get so strong across Mammoth and Ocean counties, Middle Sex, and Somerset counties that it robs the north half of storms. So, I don't think it's equally distributed um in terms of storm coverage as we go into tomorrow. When I come back, we'll talk more about that.

[00:09:33]And we really got to we got All right, we got some problems for Memorial Day weekend. We got to talk about that.

[00:09:37]That's coming up next.

[00:09:45]You're watching Forecast Focus with Mike Masco.

[00:09:50]>> Problems, problems, problems. I knew we were going to do this and I think I jinx I think it's my fault. I think we I jinxed us um by saying we weren't going to time this this heat um right. And unfortunately, we timed it so wrong by like four to five days. Anyway, we'll get through it. It's not all doom and gloom. I promise. Uh let's stay on the severe weather threat today tomorrow rather. That's the bigger focus. Um pull up graphics. I want to show you this is the Storm Prediction Center's forecast.

[00:10:15]This is a level one. Now, could I see this go to level two across central New Jersey? Sure. But you get the general idea here. You could see how it's just complete popcorn variety thunderstorms after 3:00. And then there's going to be some cohesive banding that h happens uh just south of New York City. This could even include Staten Island, Bayon, um you know into say the oranges for the possibility and again three modes of severe weather on on Wednesday. Gusty winds I think we could see some wind gust at around 50 mph in some bigger storms. I don't think we're going to see a tremendous amount of supercells develop intense rainfall as precipitable water temp uh water values which is the amount of moisture in the atmosphere are going to be running high. That means if you have basically what we do is we sample an air. We sample the atmosphere in a particular column and we assume that the thunderstorm is going to take that whole column of air and just ring it out like a sponge.

[00:11:14]We denote that with numbers like one or two. Two is very juicy atmosphere. So we are forecasting precipitable Pwatts of around one and a half to two. You weather buffs know exactly what I'm talking about. Anybody else? You have no clue what I just said.

[00:11:30]Just take my word on it. Very juicy storms. Uh and then dangerous lightning with the all the humidity in play.

[00:11:36]Dangerous lightning is going to be part of the forecast um as we move forward.

[00:11:40]All right. Forecast temperatures real quick. I want to take you through this because next couple days really, really warm both on Wednesday. Here's Wednesday's forecast highs. Lower and middle 90s. And then we crash and burn these temperatures. I mean, right down into the 60s, 40s and 50s at night. and by the end of the week we're into the 60s. So huge reversal and pattern change. Let's talk about the Memorial Day weekend forecast. I'm giving you a snapshot of what we're looking at as meteorologists. Friday right now is trending dry. Okay, I think all the rain stays away until Friday night and Saturday. There's going to be a low over the region on Saturday. I think it's pronounced showers across the entirety of the region. I think they're heavy and steady and uh heavy and steady by by default and maybe a slow exit and it's an easterly wind. That's another thing.

[00:12:35]Really chilly weather. Now Sunday, here's my optimism kicking in. I think that low could get a off the coast.

[00:12:42]We'll have some residual showers across say Montalk Mid Island eastbound and then we dry out on Sunday. one more push of rain comes through Sunday night into a Monday and then I think for the parades on Monday and the festivities for Memorial Day, um we could start to dry out once again. All right, so Saturday looks to be the worst in terms of temperatures, the worst in terms of rain coverage. Only 60° with a 50% or better chance of rain on Saturday.

[00:13:11]That's how I see it right now. Shouldn't stop the plans. Saturday should give you pause. If you have outdoor plants, you might want to have a contingency on that. So, freef fall mode in New York City and then we lose the sunshine going into the weekend. Just shower variety with more steadier rains on Saturday.

[00:13:28]Long Island worst uh than than um New York City because I think you have a lot more maritime air. It's 50s all all we can muster up and then Sunday 60 maybe getting into the upper higher 60s on Monday. Jersey Shore. Not a total wash out, but a great day to hit up the boardwalks.

[00:13:47]Go down to all the um uh destination beaches, spend some money, get some nice coffee, you could do some arcade games on the boardwalks. You're fine for that.

[00:13:58]I don't think it's a wash out with the exception of Saturday. And the suburbs might actually have a little more sunshine and warmer temperatures on Memorial Day Monday as most of the shower activity will be to the south and to the east. So once we get back past the heat, that's when we get back into unfortunately a really really unsettled weather pattern. We'll keep evolving this forecast on Memorial Day. We'll talk more about the storms for uh Wednesday coming up on tomorrow's episode. Have a great day.