The top weather headline across most of the U.S. will be the blazing heat wave from the southern Plains all the way to the Mid-Atlantic and New England beaches. The other weather interruption will be pop-up showers and thunderstorms impacting outdoor plans across the northern Plains, Southeast, Rockies and even the Northeast.

WeatherBug Meteorologist Todd Nelson has the latest in this exclusive WeatherBug National Outlook.

Heat and humidity will continue at full throttle as highs skyrocket into the 90s to near 100 across a large swath of the country. The added high humidity will make it feel uncomfortable in places like Nashville, Tenn., Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. High temperatures will also spike into 90s in the Northeast. These temperatures teaming up with high humidity will create heat indices close to 105 degrees.

The only relief will come in the form of a few pop-up showers and storms across the Southeast as well as northern New England, where a few could become severe and produce large hail and destructive wind gusts. Rochester and Utica, N.Y., Burlington, Vt., and Caribou and Houghton, Maine, will be just some of the cities in the severe weather danger zone today.

The Plains will be hot with the mercury climbing well into the 90s and triple-digits. The exception will be across eastern Montana and the Dakotas, where a cold front will produce severe thunderstorms. North of the front over the upper Mississippi Valley, seasonable 70s and 80s will be met by a few nuisance showers.

The Great Lakes, Middle Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley will continue to bake with bright sunshine and high humidity. However, a cold front will move through this evening and trigger a few showers and thunderstorms capable of producing gusty winds. Temperatures will warm into the 90s ahead of the cold front, from Louisville, Ky., to Cleveland.

There won`t be much reprieve from the heat for residents in the West, other than cooling-afternoon and evening thunderstorms along the U.S. and Canada border, as well as along the Rocky Front Range. Most everyone will see highs rise into the 80s, 90s and even a few lower 100s for the Desert Southwest, while unseasonably cool 60s and 70s blanket the Interstate 5 corridor from Washington State to southern California; even the highest peaks of the Rocky Front Range will only manage the 70s as thunderstorms keep summertime heat to a minimum.

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