By late November standards today was a wonderful day to wrap our weekend up, if just a little cooler than yesterday, with clear skies and northerly winds as a quick, weak front swept through and dried us out. Certainly no complaints for the rest of our day and evening as we get down to the 40s overnight, but stay crystal clear until tomorrow morning. Let’s focus in on tomorrow (Monday) and Tuesday, as these days are when things change for the wetter and more unsettled across the Tennessee Valley.
For the most part, Monday itself actually looks rather nice – with those winds back out of the south, it’ll feel more like a Spring day with highs from 69-72 across the area, but we will nevertheless be dry for the bulk of our daytime hours and we’ll have no need to change our day plans up. Models have remained very consistent that it’s the overnight hours Monday is when we see the first push of those washout conditions as the system moves through – with thunderstorms looking likely especially towards the first half of Tuesday as we get closer to the core of this system.
The Storm Prediction Center has put out a level 1 of 5 severe weather risk for Tuesday associated with this system as there is the potential a stray storm here and there ends up on the stronger side – mainly with winds up to or over 50mph as a possibility, as well as small hail. Tornado threat is very minimal, so don’t get in your mind that we have any sort of outbreak on our hands; this is not at all any kind of situation like that. Just a good old fashioned frontal passage! We’ll of course keep an eye on these storms as we get closer to Monday night and Tuesday, but the key takeaway is to expect widespread thunderstorm activity in this timeframe.
Good news is that the timeframe everyone is focused on – that is, Thanksgiving and towards Black Friday – looks just great. We’ll certainly need a coat as temperatures take a turn for the cold as that front brings us down to the 50s and upper 40s for highs (with widespread freezing conditions overnight late week, so prepare those plants!), but we stay as dry as can be until next weekend. Signals suggest the next couple weeks may end up wet as well, but it’s a bit too early for specifics… what’s important is that after this quick cold front, our holiday plans won’t need to be changed around due to the weather!
