Amur Leopard Cubs Play In The Snow

Heat in the Southeast and Northwest and relative coolness in the middle of the country is the expected temperature regime in July, according to an outlook released Friday by The Weather Company, an IBM Business.

Temperatures will likely be hotter than midsummer averages across the Southeast from Florida northward into southeastern Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, southern Virginia, southeastern West Virginia and East Tennessee.

A hotter-than-average July is also forecast in the Pacific Northwest, northern Rockies and far northern Plains. This includes parts of Northern California, Oregon, Washington, the chimney of Idaho, northern Montana, northern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.

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Near-average or slightly higher temperatures can be expected over a broad area from the Northeast into the upper Midwest, Ohio and Tennessee valleys, parts of the northern Plains, northern Rockies, Great Basin and Central California.

"We’ve made warmer changes to our July forecast across the northern and eastern U.S., given the expected modification to the pattern into at least week three (of July)," said Dr. Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at The Weather Company.

The forecast is a bit more uncertain than usual, however, explained Crawford. He's worried an anticipated pattern change may not come to fruition, with the pattern instead returning to the one that dominated the United States in May and June, when cool temperatures were locked in across parts of the West, Plains, Midwest and, at times, the Northeast.

"The combination of the North Atlantic blocking signal, record soil-moisture levels and continued weak El Niño conditions are all in opposition to this pattern change, so we’ve kept the changes fairly muted and feel confidence is lower than normal for July," Crawford said.

Meanwhile, temperatures will likely be near-average or slightly lower across much of the central and southwestern U.S.

The farthest below-average temperatures are forecast in parts of the southern Plains and southern Rockies, particularly from southern Colorado and eastern New Mexico into southwestern Kansas, western Oklahoma and northwestern Texas.

(MORE: 5 Things We Typically See in July's Weather)

The record or near-record rainfall during the spring is one of the main drivers for the cooler temperatures in the central states, Crawford said. Heavier-than-average rains fell in the Plains, Southwest and parts of the Northeast in April, May and June.

Consequently, soil moisture remains far above average in much of those regions, and that can greatly influence temperatures in the summer.

When the landscape is wet, some of the sun's energy that would otherwise heat the Earth's surface and the air near the surface is instead used for evapotranspiration, the process that transfers water to the atmosphere and pulls water from vegetation back into the air. As a result, temperatures aren't able to warm as efficiently, leading to cooler conditions than if the soils were dry.

However, it's important to note that even though temperatures may be cooler than average for July in the central U.S., the saturated soils will cause the air to be very humid, so it really won't feel all that "cool," despite potentially lower readings on the thermometer.