Low humidity and winds could make any fires spread rapidly Thursday in the Lehigh Valley, according to forecasters.<\/p>\n
The National Weather Service in Mount Holly, New Jersey, said relative humidity values will drop to 30-40% in the afternoon, and that, along with gusts of up to 20 mph and dry conditions, could cause the \u201crapid spread\u201d of any fires that ignite.<\/p>\n
Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon, Monroe and Berks counties are all under an elevated fire risk Thursday. Conditions should improve later in the day.<\/p>\n
Outdoor burning is discouraged, and potential ignition sources, such as smoking materials like cigarette butts, should be properly extinguished and disposed of, according to forecasters.<\/p>\n
Lower Mount Bethel Township and Weisenberg Township have issued burn bans because of the increased fire risk.<\/p>\n
Temperatures are expected to reach into the upper 50s. Highs will jump into the 60s over the weekend before going into the 70s and 80s next week.<\/p>\n
Here is the extended forecast from the National Weather Service:<\/p>\n
Friday: Patchy fog before 7 a.m. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 69. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Saturday: Sunny, with a high near 61. Northwest wind around 10 mph.<\/p>\n
Sunday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 64.<\/p>\n
Monday: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 77.<\/p>\n
Tuesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 83.<\/p>\n
Wednesday: Partly sunny, with a high near 84.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Low humidity and winds could make any fires spread rapidly Thursday in the Lehigh Valley, according to forecasters.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,433,182,12279,139,434,28,432,1133,54030],"class_list":{"0":"post-161437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-lehigh-county","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-lower-mount-bethel-township","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-northampton-county","16":"tag-pennsylvania","17":"tag-top-stories-tmc","18":"tag-weather","19":"tag-weisenberg-township"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}