In many summers, I find myself rolling my eyes at other outlets’ analyses of the surface. There is often a stationary boundary, left for days along the Gulf Coast of the US. Perhaps a cold front had descended from the Ohio Valley a week prior, but eventually, you need to call a spade a spade. There is onshore flow, and it causes thunderstorms. Not every boundary is a cold front.

This year, and especially right now, we haven’t been seeing those straggler boundaries populating the coast. Right now, it’s evident that there is an off shore boundary pointing into the Carolinas

One might be inclined to analyze something along the band of thunderstorms through north Florida, or perhaps even further north on the clearing line from southern Kentucky to central Oklahoma. In fact, most outlets are keeping truncated fronts, and there is a very good reason for that.

All of those orange and red shades are heat advisories. It is astonishingly hot throughout the Plains and Mississippi Valley. It’s really hard to say there is a cold front when there is a heat wave immediately behind the boundary. The WPC, proponent of the long ranging front, parlays the cold front into a warm front hugging those advisories to the west.

The jet is still somewhat active, but it remains well north of the domestic US. A cooler start to July in the southeast and a blistering start in the north is also starting to level off, but is making for a challenging environment for cold fronts to survive. If a change occurs, it will have to come from the west, which may happen next week.

The United States is experiencing it’s own catastrophes this year. Growing wildfires and drought in the west, with flash floods in the southeast, along with heatwaves in the north. A lot of the worst weather in the world seems to afflict the United States in an outsized fashion, but it seems that is not the case in recent weeks.

First is the story of flooding in central Europe. Relentless and heavy rains have been hammering Benelux and western Germany, leading to river flooding on the Rhine in Germany and the Meuse in Belgium in particular, with subsidiaries an other rivers also spilling out of their banks. The intensity of the rains also led to flash flooding in these areas, while the river flooding is continuing to disrupt lives, with the threat of disease adding onto threats to infrastructure and livelihood.

The flooding was the result of a stalled, training pattern of showers and thunderstorms that lasted for the better part of last week. The good news is that the flooding is going to be allowed to abate over the next week, at least. High pressure over the British Isles is going to drift toward the Low Countries and barricade them from additional rainfall for the week. The next real threat for showers and thunderstorms is next weekend, and we can all hope that the feature moves as quickly as the models presently suggest.

A bit closer to home, tornadoes are in the news. The US has had an incredible string of good fortune, in that there were no tornadoes stronger than EF2 in May or June. Unfortunately, in Barrie, Canada, the tornado news was worse. A tornado – measuring at an EF2 – struck residential parts of the community, taking roofs off of houses, but fortunately, doing structural damage and sparing the residents of the houses it hit.

Listen to the tale of Natalie Harris, a City Councilor in Barrie, who saw significant damage to her home during the twister on Thursday.

The greatest damage was to the far southeastern part of town. The damage would surely have been more significant if it had been just a couple miles to the north.

Another massive heat wave is in the forecast according to the CPC’s outlook, and this time, the region expected to be baked is the northern Plains and Upper Midwest. Curiously, while the northern US roasts, the southern part of the country looks to be well below normal. In the summer, that’s comfortable, so it’s not the story,

Unlike the blocking ridge that brought the heat in the Pacific Northwest last month, this looks like a more traditional ridge allowing all that heat to build. Temperatures from Montana through the Dakotas and into northern Minnesota could hit triple digits through early next week.

There will be a remnant mid and upper level trough over the southern US, which will lead to several rainy days, and keep temperatures cool. If it weren’t for that trough, given the greater jet pattern, a more significant heat wave could have been in store for a bigger population.