‘It is going to be hot.’ Heat wave descends on Charlotte, with record highs expected.
A weather system that began settling over Charlotte on Thursday could deliver record high temperatures over the next week, a National Weather Service meteorologist said Thursday.
“It is going to be hot,” meteorologist Harry Gerapetritis of the NWS office in Greer, S.C., told The Charlotte Observer.
Not hot as in heat-stroke-alert hot, but still hot, he said.
Highs could be 10 degrees above normal some days and 15 degrees higher than average in some parts of the region, Gerapetritis said.
Temps could hit 90 degrees at Charlotte’s airport on Saturday for the first time this year, according to the NWS forecast at 4 p.m. Thursday.
A large area of high pressure in the atmosphere is already developing over Charlotte, bringing the heat wave that’s expected to last through the middle part of next week, Gerapetritis said.
“It’s just going to strengthen over several days,” he said.
Heat wave timetable
“(Thursday) we’re looking at (highs) in the lower 80s and for tomorrow, highs in the upper 80s,” he said. We should get up to the lower 90s by Saturday afternoon. And those temperatures in the 90s are going to be around for awhile, so it’s going to be hot.”
Highs normally average in the low 80s the last two weeks of May, he said.
Temperatures could reach 93 degrees on Sunday at Charlotte Douglas Airport, 96 on Monday, 94 on Tuesday and 95 on Wednesday, according to the NWS forecast.
Heat records possible
Monday could be the first day a record high is set during the heat wave, Gerapetritis said. The record stands at 95 degrees, set in 1939, he said.
Tuesday’s record high, also 95 degrees, was set in 2019, he said.
The weather could seem extra hot during the spell because it’s the first prolonged period of temperatures in the 90s this year, he said.
What about the heat index?
The forecast calls for mostly sunny skies through the period.
Still, humidity is predicted to be so low that the heat index should stay in the mid-90s, he said. The NWS issues alerts about dangerously hot conditions when the heat index hits 105, Gerapetritis said.
The heat index is what the temperature feels like when humidity levels and temperature are combined.
This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 5:08 PM.