Orlando weather: Heat dome brings 3-day stretch of 95-100 temperature highs

Right now, a massive plume of Saharan dust is hovering over central florida. Now that dust is lowering our air quality and could pose some risks for folks with respiratory issues. Fox 35 storm team meteorologist Noah Bergeron joins us now. Yeah, no, that dust is also impacting our temperatures. It is. It helps to make it even hotter than an ordinarily would be now for the air quality. It's gonna really come down this weekend. We're actually already seeing it outside. In fact, we'll show you the cameras. If you look at the top right of your screen, you can kind of see the sky does not look blue behind the clouds. And that's because of Saharan dust that is starting to move in today. In fact, here is that camera from Orange County downtown. Look beneath and behind the clouds that haze that is literally the dust. I'll take off the banner so you can see it's between about 5000 and 15,000 ft up in the atmosphere. Take what you look now, multiply it by about 3 to 4. That's what the sky will look like saturday into sunday, way hazier, way more opaque, way blurrier and at sunrise and sunset will kind of have a red orange amber glow. Now our air quality map does show we have some fair air quality from Orlando down to Miami. In fact, some of the sensors in Miami, it doesn't show up on our image here. Some of the sensors down around Key West of Miami are actually reporting unhealthy officially air quality as of this afternoon and that reduction in air quality will continue to move in from the Caribbean with the dust. So if you've never heard of Saharan dust, it's nothing new. It happens every summer. The winds in early summer blow off the african desert and push the dust in the ocean. Well, some summers it reaches us some years. It doesn't just depends on the summer. It causes vibrant sunrises and sunsets. It can lower the amount of PM rain chances and the air quality. It's coming in today. It will peak locally this weekend with a very hazy sky evidence all across central florida. Here comes that plume of dust. Also, it inhibits hurricanes to forum. So that is a plus. So no hurricanes across the atlantic for at least the next little while. And you can see all that dust comes in and by saturday into sunday, look at the deep brown here. I think saturday night, the sunset and sunday morning sunrise will look especially vibrant and glowing and amber out there. Thanks to that dust. All right. Otherwise it is dang hot out there. I mean, wow, is it hot even for florida 99 in the villages now 98 in Ocala 97 in Orlando 97 in ST cloud 97 currently in the land. Here's the live heat index 1 12 in Clearmont 108 San for 1 17 in New Smyrna. We could really use some cooling thunderstorms right now, but we're not going to get really any for most of us tonight. Why is it so hot? Well, we have a giant heat dome across the southern U. S. One side of it's over florida, the other side of it's out over across Denver and beneath that, the air is sinking. Think about it like blowing up your bike tire or your car tire. When it's flat, you take the nozzle off and it's hot when you compress the air, it heats up. That's what happens beneath this heat dome and that will be over us through the weekend until it starts to move back out to the west. It's out the door tomorrow, hazy and hot 77 at 6 81 at nine already into the nineties by the noon hour highs tomorrow for the 10th of july up close to 99 for most inland places, maybe a few spots over 100 at the beaches, even also into the middle nineties. I do want to show you that future cast now tomorrow. I don't think we have a lot of storm chances here. If anything, it's one or two. Here's 1 30. We're dry. However, looking southwest tomorrow, if we were giving you the forecast for Tampa, it would be wildly different. Why? They're gonna get big, really big thunderstorms tomorrow coming out of the Atlantic. There's a little wave of energy that's gonna cross southward. Look here at eight o'clock tomorrow. Really big thunderstorms from Sarasota to Tampa. That'll kind of move northwest south of us. So looking south tomorrow evening, the sky might look really ominous. But for our area, I think that complex of storms will miss us and head towards Tampa saturday 97 afternoon storm chances return sunday. More typical heat though for early next week. We'll be right back.