It’s the first day of summer! If this summer is anything like our spring, we are in for a hot few months.

Spring of this year was the warmest on record in most locations in the ArkLaTex, including Shreveport, Texarkana and Longview. Temperatures were a remarkable five or six degrees higher than average.

So how is this summer looking? The first day of the season should bring seasonable temperatures with lows in the low 70s and highs in the low 90s.

And so far this June, we’re doing ok: our temperatures are running only a degree or two off our averages.

Here are the average recorded high temperatures so far this June, compared to average June highs over the past 30 years:

Shreveport: 91.5 degrees (average is 90.1 degrees)
Marshall: 90.1 degrees (average is 88.8 degrees)
Henderson: 88.8 degrees (average is 89.3 degrees)
Minden: 90.2 degrees (average is 89.2 degrees)
DeQueen: 88.9 degrees (average is 88.1 degrees)

The official summer outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls for higher-than-average temperatures and near-average rainfall in much of the eastern and southwestern United States, but it shouldn’t be as hot as last year.

So if you’re heading to the Gulf Coast, Southwest or Northeast for a summer vacation, chances are you’ll have to pack for a warmer than normal trip.

Over much of the Midwest and Northwest, temperatures are forecast to be near-normal with a wetter-than-normal summer in the Pacific Northwest.

One factor that could influence our summer outlook is the possible development of El Nino, the warming trend in the Eastern Pacific Ocean that has long-reaching effects on weather in the United States.

If El Nino develops by mid to late summer, it could bring slightly cooler and stormier weather to much of the southeast and western United States. It would also inhibit hurricane development in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

While temperatures for the first three weeks of this June have been close to normal, a warming trend is expected to begin at the end of this week. That will take our high temperatures into the mid and upper 90s for the final week of the month – that’s about 4-9 degrees above normal.