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Many of us near 90° each through the 4th of July; limited storm chances

We've gotten a late start to 90° heat this year, but we'll make up some ground this week.

High temperature trend through the 4th of July 2020

ROANOKE, Va. – Areas like Roanoke, Lynchburg and Southside have only hit 90° five to seven times so far this year. Compare that to last year’s 10-15 times at this point, and it feels like we’re a little behind. We’ll make up some ground on that throughout the holiday weekend.

Along with that, humidity and a front nearby comes the chance for scattered showers and thunderstorms. We’ll start you out with Tuesday.

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With a front stalled just south of here, the better chance for thunderstorms will be along and south of US 460 between 12 and 6 p.m.

FutureTracker - 4 p.m. Tuesday

Even as get closer to sunset, a few slow-moving thunderstorms will be possible. These will slowly fizzle out, as we lose the heat of the day and the storm cools the air around itself.

FutureTracker - 9 p.m. Tuesday

By Wednesday, the front is well south of here. However, we’ll still be plenty warm and humid. Just like clockwork, scattered showers and thunderstorms develop after about 12 p.m.

FutureTracker - 1 p.m. Wednesday

As the day goes on, high pressure to the north will continue to push our front farther south. This will reduce storm chances from Wednesday night through Friday. Still, we’ll keep it seasonably hot and humid through the rest of the week.

FutureTracker - 8 p.m. Wednesday

This paves the way for a pretty optimistic 4th of July forecast. The storm track remains to our south, meaning that anything significant is unlikely. We still can’t rule out a few late day pop-up storms, but let’s be honest...that’s pretty typical anyway.

What We're Tracking - Independence Day 2020

Temperatures, meanwhile, will be running quite toasty again. For now, we expect highs around 87-93° area-wide. Some pieces of forecast data are indicating we could be even a touch hotter than that. We won’t jump the gun this far out, but if this hotter trend becomes more consistent in the data - we’ll make necessary changes to our forecast.

4th of July forecast - 2020

The storm track rises north later in the weekend into early next week, indicating that storm chances will return to the forecast by then.