‘Ring of Fire’ Storms May Slam Illinois Due to Heat Dome

As I was wincing looking at the expected temperatures for the next week, I was alerted to an unexpected side effect of that incoming heat. As a heat dome (of sorts) settles over the Midwest, a 'ring of fire' storm track is likely to begin impacting Illinois.

I first saw this new video shared by meteorologist Nick Stewart on his YouTube channel which I had to have interpreted by my meteorologist wife because my simple mind is unable to process this kind of science. As Nick tells it, there's a high pressure system that will be setting up over the middle south. My wife explained that the resulting 'heat dome' is trapped hot air. That will set up a 'ring of fire' storm track that will bring storms over the northern quarter of Missouri and nearly all of Illinois.

Nick does a much better job than I can of explaining what this means, but the layman's version is this path over Illinois will be very favorable to storm development.

Watch out for extreme heat indexes that are forecast for much of Missouri and Illinois next week. Triple digit misery looks like it's about to make a return. For example, Accuweather shows Springfield, Illinois is expecting highs of 94 by midweek and that's just the regular temperature not factoring in the heat index. When you add the storm chance to that, brace yourself for a challenging next few days.