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U.P. escapes high heat gripping much of the country

Brian Rowell Daily Press Visitors to Aronson Island enjoy a day at the Escanaba Municipal Beach Tuesday afternoon.

IRON MOUNTAIN — Warmer-than-normal temperatures are expected across much of the United States in July but the Upper Peninsula is an exception.

The National Weather Service has a neutral outlook on temperatures for the region while favoring above-normal rainfall.

“The temperature outlook favors well-above-average temperatures across almost the entire nation, with no tilt in odds toward any category over parts of the northern Midwest,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center.

The CPC precipitation outlook calls for a 45% chance of above-average rainfall in the Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin in July and just a 20% chance of below average.

The U.S. Drought Monitor shows no areas of concern across all of the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin.

The CPC’s long-range precipitation outlook through September is neutral for the U.P. and northern Wisconsin.

The temperature outlook over that same span calls for a 45% chance of above normal and a 20% chance of below normal.

El Nino was not a factor in the July forecast, as conditions in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean are in a neutral phase, Halpert said. The 2023-24 El Nino event, marked by warmer-than-normal waters in that region, helped fuel a spike in global temperatures and contributed to record-breaking warmth locally this past winter.

Although El Nino has faded, a report from the World Meteorological Association shows that widespread above-normal sea-surface temperatures are expected to persist outside the near-equatorial eastern Pacific. Warming driven by heat-trapping greenhouse gases contributes to WMO’s prediction of above-normal temperatures over almost all land areas.

In the U.S., forecasters are warning of dangerous heat through this weekend over the interior Southwest and into mid-July over the interior West, challenging some all-time record highs for the month of July.

“At its peak, afternoon high temperatures will be around 20 degrees above average in the worst-hit areas,” AccuWeather meteorologist Heather Zehr said.

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