It is disrespectfully cold out there this morning! Check out morning lows across our part of the Tennessee Valley… most all of us were down into the teens this morning, with several spots in southern middle Tennessee in the low to mid teens. Lewisburg, TN was all the way down to 10 degrees for a morning low! As of the 7:00am hour as I’m typing this, temperatures had recovered a couple of degrees in a few areas, but we were still in the 10s over most of the area. Wind chill values this morning have been as low as the single digits across both southern Tennessee and north Alabama!
The good news is that wall to wall sunshine and a dry air mass will allow temperatures to “warm” efficiently today. The bad news is that the air mass over us right now originates from the stand-up garage freezer at Santa’s workshop at the North Pole; so, there’s only so much warming you can do! Daytime highs today will reach into the upper 30s to lower 40s. That IS a decent climb from temps this morning, but it’s still cold! We have another cold night ahead of us tonight, but maybe a few degrees “less cold”. Overnight lows look to get down to the low to mid 20s, but there could certainly be some of our naturally cooler running spots that sneak down to the teens once again by daybreak on Saturday morning.
Things start to change as early as Saturday though. High pressure begins shifting east, and the arctic air mass begins to retreat and shift out. We start to get more of a southerly wind beginning on Saturday, and this means moderating temperatures. With still mostly sunny to partly cloudy skies, temperatures will climb to the upper 40s and lower 50s, and we’ll stay near or above freezing Saturday night! Clouds increase further on Sunday, and rain showers start to move into the area as early as the midday to afternoon. Rain gets heavier Sunday overnight into Monday morning, along with a few embedded thunderstorms getting involved. No severe storms are expected, however. Rain may taper off a bit by the midday to afternoon on Monday, but another disturbance ridges up the front bringing additional rain showers Monday night into parts of Tuesday. Milder temperatures will continue into early next week with daytime highs in the low to mid 60s Monday and still the upper 50s to lower 60s Tuesday. That front finally eases in here by the middle of the week though, and with it is a return to 40s for highs for Wednesday and Thursday. It won’t be nearly as potent of a cold shot as the current one though!
The latest 8-14 day outlook from the NWS Climate Prediction Center suggests much of the country may get into milder / warmer air as we head toward mid month on into the period closer to Christmas. This is in the week 2 timeframe from now, and it’s still subject to changes. However, it’s definitely a plausible idea based on the large scale pattern signals in the data at the moment. We’ll see how it goes as we get closer!
