It’s another partly sunny and warm late October day across the Tennessee Valley on this Wednesday. An upper-level high pressure ridge is centered over the Southeast, and a surface high is off toward the North Carolina coast. This is allowing a persistent southerly wind and plenty of sunshine. Temperatures this afternoon are into the upper 70s and lower 80s areawide. The upper ridge is keeping all the rain west of us, with the closest rain and storms to our area being from Kansas down to central Texas.
Skies stay partly cloudy going into the overnight, and with the southerly wind persisting, that will keep temps from dropping too much lower than the upper 50s to lower 60s, although a few locations in southern middle Tennessee might sneak down to the mid 50s. Thursday will feature more of the same as today, with partly sunny skies and daytime highs once again into the upper 70s and lower 80s.
The weather for our area really doesn’t change too much all the way through Friday and Saturday either. The cold front over the Plains will slow down as it approaches the Mississippi Valley going into the weekend. This will keep our area in warm conditions, southerly flow, and the main rain chances to our northwest. We can’t completely rule out a shower Friday or Saturday, but the vast majority of us will be dry. Daytime highs will likely climb into the lower 80s areawide over the weekend.
The big changes begin to take shape on Sunday as another piece of upper-level energy ejects out of the Midwest, and the front to our north starts to push southward. We still look to remain warm on Sunday, with daytime highs into the lower 80s once again. As we head into late Sunday night, the cold front starts moving into our area after midnight and the early morning hours of Monday. Rain showers move in with the front and last into at least the first half of Monday. Our daytime high temps for Monday will be in the 12am-3am timeframe, with temperatures dropping into the mid to upper 50s behind the front by sunrise on Monday and then steadily dropping toward the 40s by the afternoon. Northerly winds will gust as high as 20-25 mph behind the front during the day. That colder pattern continues on through Halloween on Tuesday and into the first few days of November as we work through the latter part of next week. Highs next Tuesday and Wednesday only look to reach the low to mid 50s (and that might be a bit optimistic), and it’s very likely we will see our first areawide frost (if not light freeze) by next Wednesday morning and Thursday morning. The good news for trick-or-treaters is any rain will be long gone before Tuesday afternoon and evening, having shifted to our south later in the day on Monday. Kiddos are just going to have to bundle up Tuesday evening and probably have to wear a warm jacket or coat over their costumes.
Looking ahead beyond the next seven days, we look to keep that chilly and dry pattern into at least late next week or the following weekend, but there are signs that we may shift toward milder weather and possibly a more active weather pattern as we get deeper into the first full week of November. That’s still a ways out, and there could certainly be changes, but we do often shift into more active weather as we head into November, even climatologically speaking.
