Marine heat wave off the West Coast of Europe weakens as an upper trough generates across this area into mid-July with a compensating hot and dry ridge emerging across Southern Europe and enhanced by Northwest Africa heat. Dry and hot focus shifts into South/Southeast Europe during mid-summer.

A wet soil moisture change zone emerged in June focused along and just east of the Continental Divide and across the western Great Plains. Operational forecasts in recent days have indicated the wet trend over the West-central U.S. during June will shift eastward and into the Midwest U.S. drought region in July, a somewhat unexpected regime change.

The Nino34 SSTA region in the east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean shifted warmer last week to +1.00 as El Nino steadily strengthens and approaches moderate intensity. Waters off the northwest coast of South America (Nino12 region) are the warmest since May 1998 which along with 1982 and 2015 marked the strongest El Nino on record.

In the latest example of the influence of a rapidly emerging marine heat wave (MHW) has on warming the atmosphere aloft to propel high pressure ridging and weather patterns featuring sudden extreme heat and dryness, the “highest alert possible” for heat in Beijing, China is issued.