The heat will continue to build for the next few days, resulting in upper 90 valley temperatures on Wednesday, and into triple digit range for the next several days thereafter (high temperature records are likely to fall late this week and through the weekend.) A very dry airmass and stable flow will keep the skies blue through Thursday, but all this heat can’t be bottled up forever, and afternoon clouds will begin to appear by the weekend, if not before, and a slight chance of thunderstorms creeps into the forecast by the end of the weekend.

A thunder-phobe wrote in to ask: “A while ago I read that if you see the flash and start counting (one-one thousand) that each 5 seconds from the flash to hearing the thunder rumble is one mile. Is that true? It is an empowering tool to know if the thunder is moving towards you or away based on time between flash and thunder.”

It’s true. In rough numbers (and when you are doing the old “one watermelon, two watermelon” timing method, you are just approximating anyway) every 5 seconds is about one mile when timing lightning’s distance from your location. Sound travels at approximately a thousand feet per second, and a mile is just over five thousand feet in distance.