This hot spell a taste of things to come?

The government's seasonal outlook released this week has quite a warmish look.

It favors above-normal temperatures during the June 1-Aug.31 period, the meteorological summer, with the greatest likelihood right along the East Coast, including the Philadelphia region.

The Climate Prediction Center says that both the computer models and the long-term trends argue for another round of higher air-conditioning use.

We won't put too much trust in the models' powers to see the future, but the trends do present a clear picture of the past.

In Philly, in 143 years of recordkeeping, the average summer temperature through 2016 was 74.9. In the last 10 summers, it was 77.6. The summer of 2016 was the second-warmest on record.

This is at least the third major forecast we've seen that is voting for the warmth.

After a cool-ish start in June, AccuWeather Inc. sees summer temperatures finishing above normal.

And at WeatherBELL, AccuWeather alum Joe Bastardi predicted that temperatures would finish significantly above normal, but with the biggest pulse of heat coming early.

We can say that this particularly heat wave -- it reached 93 just before 3 p.m. Friday at Philadelphia International Airport, the third consecutive day of 90-plus temperatures -- has spent itself.

As for the next three months, we all know that the atmosphere is not particularly impressed with attempts to predict its behavior.