Tropical Storm Cindy Drowns Gulf Coast; Southwest Bakes Enough To Cancel Flights

Tropical Storm Cindy and the Southwest heat wave are the big news stories of the day, so we'll get right into those: 

Ragged but very, very wet Tropical Storm Cindy in the
Gulf of Mexico this morning.

CINDY:

Tropical Storm Cindy, as anticipated, formed yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico, and it is already drowning parts of the South in way, way too much rain.

The storm doesn't even look like a classic tropical storm, and although highest sustained winds with this thing were 60 mph early this morning, the wind isn't the big issue with Cindy.

It fact, those winds will probably diminish some by the time it makes landfall tomorrow morning.

However, Cindy is bringing immense boatloads of moisture onshore. The storm could dump up to a foot of rain in a zone between Louisiana and the Florida panhandle. This would cause horrible flooding, as you can imagine.

Especially since that area has had a super wet June already.

Later this week, the remnants of Cindy will move over the area around Tennessee and then toward North Carolina and Virginia, continuing the threat of very bad flooding in those regions.

For my local readers wondering if Cindy will have any local impacts on Vermont, the answer is, not really.

A cold front coming in Friday looks like it will want to scoop up some moisture from Cindy, which means some of the thunderstorms with the cold front could produce heavy rain. But the storms will likely move along too fast to produce any widespread flash flooding.

HEAT WAVE

That long anticipated heat wave in the Southwest hit its stride on Tuesday. Las Vegas, Nevada tied the record for its all time hottest temperature, at 117 degrees.

Also, as the Weather Channel reports, Needles, California ties its all time high temperature record with an, um, balmy 125 degrees.

Fun fact: The Peanuts character Snoopy had a brother named Spike who lived in Needles. If Spike were real, I'd hope someone would have taken him to an air conditioned place.

It could have been worse for Spike: Death Valley reached 127 degrees Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Tucson just missed its all time high temperature by one degree, as it reached 116 degrees there. Phoenix set a record high for the date with a toasty 119 degrees.

Several flights out of Phoenix were canceled because some planes can't take off in such conditions. Hot air is thinner, so they need more speed to take off, thus more runway space, which isn't always available.

As for us here in Vermont, no, the heat out west isn't going to trek across the nation and affect us. Expect near normal temperatures for this time of year during the next few days.