The next two days could shatter records for high temperatures in western Montana, said Meteorologist Ryan Leach with the National Weather Service Office in Missoula.

Leach told KGVO News early Monday morning that the heat will really kick in on Tuesday.

“Once Tuesday rolls around, we do expect to break some records for at least Tuesday and Wednesday, and then we'll get a little bit of relief probably around Thursday,” said Leach. “Then, we’ll start seeing a little bit more cloud cover and some thunderstorms may come in, but it's still going to be really hot into to the weekend, it’s an extended period of heat.”

Leach said there’d be no relief from the heat when the sun goes down for the next few nights, either.

“One of the biggest reasons that we've put out some heat warnings and heat advisories for this system is because the overnight temperatures just aren't going to recover very well at all,” he said. “In fact, it's just now got down to 69 and it's about three o'clock in the morning here in Missoula. That's a pretty slow cool-down, and that's really going to add a lot to the stress for folks, especially if they don't have air conditioning.”

Leach said the coming thunderstorms probably won’t have excessive lightning.

“It's going to take really a lot of lightning, so much lightning in fact that we would expect firefighters to be overwhelmed by the initial attack on the fires and we're really not seeing that much lightning yet,” he said. “The forecast for the thunderstorms that we're looking at moving in later this week is that we're not expecting them to have that much coverage.”

Leach said high temperature records will definitely be shattered with this week’s heat wave.

“For Missoula, the forecast high temperature on Tuesdays is 101 degrees, and the record was set back in 1937 at 100 degrees, and on Wednesday we're forecasting 102 degrees for the high and the old record was 96 degrees set back in 2008.”

There are heat advisories for all of western Montana; however, for all of Washington, Oregon and parts of Idaho, the National Weather Service has issued excessive heat warnings, with Seattle reaching up to 113 degrees on Tuesday.

 

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