Welcome to the Hudson Valley inferno 🔥
Update #711: Relatively rare triple digit heat looks likely this week.
Hello!
Mother Nature has kindly waited until after graduation before turning up the thermostat.
And she’s about to turn it all the way up 🎚️
We’re talking triple digit heat in the Hudson Valley for the fifth time this century. It also reached or exceeded 100 at the weather station in Poughkeepsie during summer 2025, 2011, 2010 and 2001. It happens once every six years, on average.
In summer of 1933, during the dust bowl, it happened seven times! That year, it also reached 104 on August 1, which still stands as the region’s highest temperature on record.
I don’t think we’re going to officially reach 104 this week in the Hudson Valley, but maybe your car thermometer will! The heat looks downright ridiculous later this week, when both New York and D.C. could challenge their all-time temperature records of 106. Considering humidity, it will feel more like 115 degrees in those places.
With cooler than average conditions in the West this week, the Northeast will be the hottest corner of the country in a rare feat.
These record temperatures are being caused by a powerful high pressure system, also called a heat dome, which is like an atmospheric force field, deflecting storms and compressing the air underneath it, which causes further warming.
A similar pattern brought remarkable heat and humidity to Europe this past week, where it reached 112 degrees in France and parts of the United Kingdom experienced record-high humidity.
The week ahead
This forecast speaks for itself. I hope your air conditioner is functioning!
Monday: the ‘coolest’ day of the week!
Tuesday: heat and humidity starts to creep up, chance for a passing shower or storm
Wednesday: blast off! 🚀
Thursday: record-breaking heat 🔥
Friday: two days of triple digit heat in a row? 🔥 ⚡
Saturday-Sunday: muggy and still hot, but daily shower and storm chances rise
Looking ahead to the week of July 6, it still looks toasty, but it probably won’t be quite as hot as this week as the core of the heat is predicted to shift west.
I took this photo of the sun on Sunday in New Zealand. I think it captures the essence of the expected conditions in the Hudson Valley this week!
See the black dots? Those are sunspots. The larger cluster of sunspots to the upper right of the sun are unfathomably large, spanning about 1.34 billion square miles across.
That’s equivalent to the surface area of nearly seven Earths 🤯
At least it won’t be quite as hot as the 10,000-degree surface of the sun in the Hudson Valley this week! ✌️