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Hot weather is expected to mix with smoke later this week to create some severe conditions.
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The hottest week of the summer is unfolding before the southeast's eyes with a bit of smoke coming along to amp up the severe conditions.

A ridge of pressure building up to bring a potentially record-breaking heat will see temperatures peak on Thursday with the forecast staying in the high 30s.

Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor talks about the factors that'll hamper this summer week.

"There's a really strong upper ridge that's sort of prevalent across Western Canada, BC and Alberta at this point in time. It starts to drift eastwards Tuesday-Wednesday and really gets centered across southeast Saskatchewan on Thursday, so associated with that we're definitely pushing temperatures upwards as the week progresses."

Temperatures will warm up until Thursday, which has a current peak of 37 degrees.

After that temperatures will drop sharply with Proctor uncertain of exactly where we'll end up.

"We're just seeing a little bit of a collapse, if I can put it that way, but not particularly strong. So, there's a lot of uncertainty about how strong the ridge collapse will be. I think areas further to the North have much more chance of seeing more active weather associated with the ridge collapse than we do in the Estevan area. But definitely there's something hinting at that at this point in time."

The smoke in the air may not be a major factor now but as the ridge progresses winds will slow, and smoke will thicken in the southeast.

"As the ridge comes in, we're going to see less in the way of winds injecting any smoke out of the area and also less dispersion of that smoke. So it's likely as the ridge settles in," said Proctor, "We'll see more smoke coming down, especially sort of Wednesday, I think at this point in time. Then a little bit into Thursday makes some improvement after that."

One extra factor to consider this week is humidity which is expected to reach very high levels during the ridge.

"The humidexes are going to be fairly high. I wouldn't be surprised to see 36 this afternoon and even tomorrow probably 35. So it's going to be holding in there and it's really, one of the things going to happen as that ridge sort of settles eastwards, we're likely to see less wind," said Proctor. "So it's going to feel even warmer. So moving that forward, likely becoming more problematic through Wednesday and Thursday, and then seeing some improvement for the end of the week into the weekend."

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