From left, Leonard Reed watches Henry Morehouse, Mike Bachand and Bob Beaudry of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3674 rake his yard Saturday on VFW Day of Service in Kingsford. (Marguerite Lanthier/Daily News photo)

IRON MOUNTAIN — The National Weather Service has a neutral outlook on temperatures this summer in the Upper Peninsula, while AccuWeather predicts temperatures ranging 2 to 3 degrees above average.

AccuWeather expects the hottest summer weather compared to average in the U.S. will be in the West and Northwest but predicts almost no areas will have temperatures below historical norms.

NWS forecaster Anthony Artusa favors above-normal summer temperatures for much of the contiguous U.S., but the Great Lakes region is among the exceptions. The NWS precipitation outlook for the U.P. from now through July is neutral.

For July and August, AccuWeather sees a moderate risk of derecho thunderstorms in northern Wisconsin and the U.P., heightening the chances of widespread wind damage. “Winds can exceed 100 mph, strong enough to flatten cornfields and trigger power outages that last for days,” AccuWeather meteorologist Brian Lada said.

Locally, the transition to warmer days is moving slowly, with highs predicted only in the 50s through Wednesday. Highs in the upper 60s are expected by the weekend.

According to greencastonline.com, the five-day soil temperature reading Sunday at Iron Mountain was 47 degrees, which was about 5 degrees below average for the date.

Temperatures at Iron Mountain-Kingsford averaged 43.3 degrees in April, which was nearly 3 degrees above average. The highest reading was 79 degrees April 23, while the lowest was 12 degrees on both April 7 and 8.

It was a wet month, with the Iron Mountain-Kingsford Wastewater Treatment Plant measuring 5.43 inches of liquid-equivalent precipitation — nearly double the month’s historical average. The total included 1.47 inches reported April 12, which was a record for that date.

The snowfall total was only 0.3 inches.

Temperature swings for the month ranged from a departure from the norm of plus 19.2 degrees on the warm side (April 24) to negative 13.4 degrees on the cold side (April 20).

El Nino, characterized by a rise in sea surface temperatures in the east-central Equatorial Pacific, is expected to develop early in the summer and influence the U.S. weather pattern through the rest of the year. As a consequence, the Climate Prediction Center favors a milder winter in the Upper Peninsula.

The U.S. Drought Monitor shows no areas of concern in the Upper Peninsula and northeastern Wisconsin. Elsewhere, there is exceptional drought in southern Georgia and northern Florida, and varying degrees of drought across much of the High Plains, especially Colorado and Nebraska.

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Jim Anderson can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 85226, or janderson@ironmountaindailynews.com.