Hotter weekend for RVA
Showers here or there, but no serious drought relief
5pm Wednesday, May 13, 2026
A few spotty showers move through Richmond this evening and into the night, then the sky clears after midnight. There is an outside chance of a thunderstorm through midnight, but it is not especially likely.
These showers will not begin to move us away from the drought. We will need to wait much longer.
Thursday is cooler, staying in the upper 60s with sun and more afternoon clouds. The breezes return, but this time from the northwest, keeping us a bit cooler.
Friday looks good: sunny and into the mid 70s.
Weekend
Perhaps not a full-on heat wave, but substantially warmer, if not hot for a few days starting on Saturday.
Saturday through Tuesday all bring sun and clouds with an incremental warming trend — mid 80s Saturday, near 90° Sunday, and into the low 90s Monday and Tuesday.
Thursday and Friday nights this week will still be comfortably cool, dropping into the upper 40s or 50s. However, the nights from Saturday through Wednesday will stay in the 60s, and there will be a noticeable increase in humidity.
To be fair, a renegade shower or thunderstorm might pop up on Saturday or Sunday, but it is highly unlikely, and not worth altering any weekend plans.
No drought relief
The next good chance to get needed rain comes Wednesday evening or Thursday next week. The amount of rain during that time is still open for discussion, but that system will mark the end of the early-week hot spell. And for now, it does not look like enough to start easing the drought.
The end of next week and next weekend — which is Memorial Day weekend — look more nebulous regarding rainfall, but they do not appear especially cool. Afternoons likely in the 70s to near 80 and nights in the 50s to near 60.
Humid heat
Although the humidity will climb this weekend and for early next week, it will not reach the stifling levels that we often see in July and August.
High humidity is not just uncomfortable, it makes the body work harder to cool itself, stressing the body further.
Remember, the body cools itself through sweating. The sweat evaporates off of your skin, which is a cooling process (think about the chill you get when you step out of the pool) to help maintain your body temperature.
As you might guess, the combination of heat and humidity, often taken together as humid heat, can lead to heat exhaustion, or worse, heat stroke.
In Richmond, humid heat starts reaching dangerous levels once the temperature exceeds 90°F and the relative humidity exceeds 55% (alternatively, when the dewpoint temperature reaches 70°F). This is not a daily occurrence in the summer, but it does happen frequently.
The above chart shows the average number of days over the past 10 years when that level of humid heat has been reached or exceeded. In Richmond, it’s about 20 days a year.
And because warmer air is capable of evaporating more water in the atmosphere, both heat and humidity have been increasing in Richmond as the climate continues to warm. Data for Richmond going back to World War II show a gradual increase in summer humidity, as 10 of the last 11 summers have been more humid than the long-term average.
Remember to hydrate this weekend and early next week, it takes the body at least a few days, if not longer, to acclimate to summer heat. And pay attention to those signs of heat illness.
NOAA Budget
There is budget news from my colleague, retired NOAA meteorologist Alan Gerard. The House of Representatives Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee has released a proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2027 that includes funding levels for NOAA, NASA, and the National Science Foundation.
After the draconian cuts proposed by the Trump Administration, Congress appears to be pushing back to preserve ongoing weather research through improving weather radar coverage, expanding the surface observation network, and continuing the critical design phase of the next generation of weather satellites, called GeoXO. For deeper coverage, subscribe to Alan’s excellent newsletter, Balanced Weather.
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