Thermometers are predicted to hit near the century mark Wednesday, marking the hottest day of the year so far.
Forecast temperatures remain mostly in the mid to upper 90s going through the weekend and into next week with chances of thundershowers posing the only relief.
“Tomorrow we’ll be getting to 99 in the Chattanooga area,” Derek Eisentrout, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Morristown, Tennessee, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “So far this month, our highest has been 97 on the 23rd and 24th. We’ve had a bit of a heat wave across the South and the Chattanooga area — very high temps and very low precipitation.”
Total rainfall for the month of June so far stands at 0.94 inches, 2.23 inches below normal, Eisentrout said. Since Jan. 1, rainfall for the year has totaled 24.77 inches, which is 2.69 inches below normal, most of that shortage coming in recent weeks.
“We were right around the normal before we got into June,” he said, noting summertime in Tennessee often has patches of hot, dry weather.