Heat wave to miss Big Horn Basin

WORLAND – According to media reports parts of the country are expect to see temperatures as high as 110 degrees next week and most of the country will be under a heat wave. Community residents concerned with the prediction of most of the United States being under a heat wave next week can rest a little easier. The Big Horn Basin will be hot but the heat will not be record breaking.

National Weather Service Riverton meteorologist Paul Skrbac said, “It will be definitely warm, starting Monday and Tuesday we will have highs of 97 Wednesday and Thursday will have highs of 95. But we are going to start seeing an increase of moisture from the south so I think by the second half of the week we will start seeing more cloud cover and hopefully more showers around, so it will start cooling of a little bit probably about Thursday on. We will start dropping the temperatures back a few degrees each day with more cloud cover and hopefully more showers around. It will be well into the 90s, but that’s kind of normal for late July.”

The second half of the week is looking good for moisture if Mother Nature cooperates. “They (storms) will start out more isolated and probably won’t reach your area (Big Horn Basin) until, maybe Wednesday. We will start seeing some down here in the south half, as early as Monday and then gradually spread northward by the middle of the week. Timing is going to be a little hard to ascertain this far out, but the pattern is setting up that we can start drawing some of that monsoonal moisture northward gradually early in the week then hopefully accelerate that second half so we can get some more rain around, at least for the mountains and hopefully for the lower elevations, too,” Skrbac said. “We need a lot of things to come together and we need that pattern to hold for three, four, five days to start drawing the moisture northward. It looks like it may do that, but we will see,” he added.

Sugar beet crops should be fine with the heat. “When it cooled off a little it wasn’t too bad but back there in June when we all of a sudden had the 100 degrees and the wind, it was pretty tough to keep the water going on them and keep ahead of them. These cooler nights and the temperatures in the 80s, the beets like 80s better than hundreds, so do cowboys,” Wyoming Sugar fieldsman Myron Casdorph said. “If people manage their irrigation right and keep up with them (sugar beets) they (sugar beets) seem to be alright,” he added.

Garden crops depending on the type should be fine as well and some will thrive with plenty of water. Washakie County extension office educator Caitlin Youngquist said, “Most plants do great in the heat as long as they get watered enough. Some plants do not like heat, some of your more cool season crops, particularly look at garden crops like broccoli, cabbage, spinach, kale some of those really don’t do well in the heat, they prefer to do spring and fall crops and can handle a little bit of a light frost. Peppers, tomatoes and all your squashes they really do well in the heat as long as they have enough water.”

If your lawn decides to go a little yellow, you may not have anything to worry about. “You will see lawns go partially dormant in the summer, even though people are watering heavily they will turn a little, sometimes that’s dormancy. So that they will go a little dormant in the summer and they will pick back up in the fall. It’s not always an issue of water and fertilizer, it’s just the cycle of the grass, and it just doesn’t handle the heat real well,” Youngquist said.

A couple of hot days followed by hopefully cooler days with more moisture gives the community something to look forward to. “There will be a few days that are pretty hot but it’s nothing that we haven’t already had,” Skrbac said.