NOAA released their monthly and seasonal outlooks for temperature and precipitation today. The outlooks show that the temperature for both July and the July-September period is leaning towards warmer than normal conditions. This is most likely linked to the trend towards warmer temperatures we have seen over the last 50 years due to a warming global climate. There is no signal towards a wetter or drier than normal precipitation amount, so NOAA has predicted equal chances of near-, above, and below normal precipitation this summer. This is due to a combination of higher-than-normal uncertainty in what will happen in the tropics this year and the likelihood that most of the rain departures will be caused by local storm events rather than large-scale weather patterns.
