Have you had a good weekend so far? I’d say I have, and the weather has helped keep the spirits up – it’s been a little cool, but its November, so that’s no shocker. Besides some upper level icy wisps throughout the day (which also made for a beautiful sunset), we’ve been clear and dry – Chapstick weather, as I call it; but I suspect these conditions aren’t long for this world. The only consistency I’m seeing over the next several days is that we’ll very likely be staying in the 40s and 50s for the foreseeable future, but besides that fact, we’re in for a bit of an uphill/downhill ride.
The first culprit is this system off to our west – you snow lovers probably wish you were out in Kansas right now. Unfortunately for you guys and girls (and fortunately for the rest of us!), we’re not looking at snow chances. For us, this is our next rainmaker; granted, it’s not going to be any huge amount of rain, but it is rain nevertheless. In a drought like this, beggars can’t be choosers, right?
More importantly, in my eyes, it’s also the system that’s going to be responsible for the upcoming much-advertised cold snap that begins early Monday and will likely last through Tuesday and into Wednesday.
The reason we’re not getting much in the way of rainfall is twofold – for one, this thing is moving quick: by early Sunday morning, the bulk of the rain we’ll see (more showers than anything else) will already be ongoing across the Tennessee Valley. Keep in mind that this system is in Oklahoma right now. Secondly, it’s fairly moisture-starved as it moves eastwards across the continental US. Overall, the precipitating portion of this system won’t yield much, as mentioned – likely somewhere in the range of 1/100th to 1/10th of an inch of rain if you’re lucky.
See that big blue cold front off to our west, though? That’s the big headline maker, if you ask me. By mid to late afternoon Sunday, the last few showers will be moving off to the east and the FROPA, or frontal passage, will be underway. It’ll take a few hours, but once it’s through, you’ll definitely know.
Waking up Monday morning, we’ll be greeted to a widespread freeze (30-32 degrees), and such begins the trend we’ll be holding for the next few days! On the bright side of things, no pun intended, we WILL be dry and clear for most of the week; at least until Thursday, and these anomalously low daytime highs will likely be more restricted to the Monday-Wednesday timeframe before wind shifts back out of the south and we get some slightly warmer, more humid air into the Tennessee Valley. That still doesn’t necessarily mean warmth; think upper 50s to near 60, but it’s a good start when you’ve dealt with mid-upper 40s for the prior couple of days!
I want to take a look at the big picture, too, because behind this dry and cold week we have the other side of the “uphill/downhill” trend – that is, our next rain chance creeping in by Friday/next weekend. I will say now that it’s a bit far out for me to specify exact totals, and timing still may change by a some hours… that said, there seems to be quite a decent amount of agreement between the various models suggesting a better, more meaningful chance at rain approaching (which may also be signs of a pattern change, possibly indicating more rain in the extended term) and 60s returning (remember that southerly wind I mentioned earlier?). All and all, this week will have more sun than rain, especially beyond tomorrow… just bundle up!
