Heat: Where is it?

Odds favor a hot summer through just about the entire nation, according to the government's Climate Prediction Center.

Its updated outlooks for July and for the July-through-September period have a warm look everywhere but in the south-central United States.

In its discussion, the forecasters site dynamical models, soil-moisture conditions, and the cosmic sea changes underway in the tropical Pacific, where the El Niño warming is toast, and a La Niña cooling is likely.

That said, we have had some recent days and nights that a dash of autumn, and the nearer-term extended outlooks are short on heat.

The 6-to-10-day forecast sees a likelihood of below-normal temperatures around here, while the two-week outlook, which laps into the first week of July, says conditions could go either way.

So far in 2016, the temperature has reached 90 on five days, which is just about normal, and technically, Philadelphia already has experienced a heat wave.

It reached 90 on May 26, 27, and 28 at Philadelphia International Airport, meeting the government criterion for a heat wave – three successive days of 90 or better.

However that hardly qualified as life-threatening, and the temperature got below 70 each night.

We don't know when the first real heat wave is coming, only that right now it's not in the immediate forecast.

It's way too early to work up a sweat about the long-range outlooks. The government scientists who put them together would be the first to acknowledge that the atmosphere is a complex and elusive place.