News Photo by Steve Schulwitz Sadie McDonald, Estella Johnson, and Ellora Johnson brace for a wave of water to engulf them while playing at the splash park in Alpena on Sunday.

ALPENA — Fall is only a month away but Mother Nature is going to make sure summer heat sticks around until school starts.

Temperatures over 80 degrees will be common for the next two weeks and dry conditions are likely through the Labor Day holiday.

According to the National Weather Service in Gaylord, the Alpena area is expected to see temperatures in the low 80s today until the end of the week. Then, the mercury will dip into the mid-70s before another round of hot weather returns Saturday through the middle of next week.

Meteorologist Jim Keysor said people will have ample opportunities to go to the beach, or take care of yard work before more fall-like weather moves in the middle of next month.

“It will be a little up and down for the next four or five days, but then we bounce back up and could be near 90 degrees for a few days,” Keysor said. “We could see a long-range pattern similar to fall where it gets warm for a few days, cools off and then gets warm again. It is a weather rollercoaster.”

One thing the area won’t see much of between now and Labor Day is rain. Keysor said there is a slight chance of showers this weekend, but nothing that will last long.

“Overall we are in a dry pattern,” he said. “It seems like we were so wet for a lot of the summer, but now we are looking at a more typical summer pattern where we won’t see much rain.”

Of course the summer weather can only last so long and inevitably cooler fall temperatures will begin to arrive, especially in the morning and after dark. Keysor said low temperatures during those times will become more common after the holiday weekend.

“It really seems that the weather flips a switch after Labor Day and the cooler temps start to come more often,” he said. “We’re not at that point yet, but we have already seen some cool mornings where you can feel fall in the air and it just feels more brisk.”