Rain and thunderstorms were raining and storming across the area for much of the past week. Check out the rain totals from the past 7 days! Mainly locations across southern middle Tennessee into northwest Alabama have seen near 2 inches to as much as 4 inches of rain. A few folks in Limestone County, AL and eastern Maury and northern Marshall Counties in TN have seen 6 or more inches of rain! We have a few more spotty showers early this Saturday morning before sunrise over north Alabama, but these are shifting southward as drier air associated with a cold front moves in, and these will shift south of our viewing area before sunrise this morning.
Expect skies to become partly cloudy and then mostly sunny as we head through our Saturday. Rain chances will be out of the way, and daytime highs will be into the mid 80s by afternoon. A few folks across the area may only climb into the low 80s! How’s that for late July in the Tennessee Valley?! With the drier air filtering in, that also allows us to cool more efficiently overnight, and lows for tonight get down into the mid 60s (with a few lower 60 readings possible here and there).
Rain chances will not take a break for just today, but through at least the middle of the coming week, as a drier weather pattern finally settles into the area for a little while. Daytime highs still hang out in the mid 80s for Sunday, but seasonably warm weather begins to return through the week, with daytime highs climbing back into the lower 90s and morning lows back in the upper 60s to near 70 degrees.
We are keeping a close eye on the tropics as we head into this Saturday. Tropical Storm Don is still churning out in the open North Atlantic, but that system is headed north and poses no threat to the United States going forward. Attention is turning to an organizing tropical disturbance in the east central portion of the tropical Atlantic, about halfway between the Cabo Verde Islands and the Lesser Antilles. Satellite data early this morning suggests that there may already be some semblance of a low-level circulation there, but if that is indeed what we are seeing, it is currently displaced to the east of the thunderstorm activity associated with the system. However, conditions will gradually but steadily become more favorable for tropical development, and the National Hurricane Center is giving this a High Risk (70% chance) of becoming a tropical depression or storm over the next 7 days as it moves westward toward the Caribbean. They note specifically that it is likely to become a depression by early in the coming week. It is WAY TOO SOON to try to speculate whether or not this may be a United States threat, regardless of what you may see on YouTube or social media clickbait type sites! Having said that, we are knocking on the door of early August soon, and we are starting to head into the time of year when systems from way out in the Atlantic have a climatologically better shot of making it westward across the basin. No need to be worried. We have PLENTY of time to watch everything. Just keep checking back from time to time over the next several days as we continue to track the system, and don’t be surprised if you hear about “Tropical Depression 6” or even “Tropical Storm Emily” forming by late in the weekend or early next week.
