The title says it all – when you have this gray, rainy type of weather like we’ve had for the last day or two, all you want to do is grab a coffee and a blanket and lay by the window all day. Thankfully… it’s the weekend, so do it! It’s a fairly typical December type of rain, largely staying light to moderate with only the sporadic thunderstorm mixed into the batch (we had our classic “4am thunder alarm clock” this morning, if you noticed!). We’re likely to hold onto these conditions for the rest of today, as well, but I don’t suspect they’re very long for this world in the big picture. The best way to describe this weekend is, in a word, bipolar; if you’re on the side of preferring dry, sunny weather, you’ll have your share coming over the next 24 hours as well.
Our culprit is this thing right here – a currently fairly slow-moving front loitering over the Tennessee Valley. In another world, we’d probably be seeing higher rain totals out of this, but that big mass of rain you see off near the Gulf Coast is largely responsible for blocking the necessary moisture flow for that to happen up here in the TN Valley. In El Nino years like this, you see this sort of pattern fairly often – you get these large complexes of thunderstorms near the gulf, with decent “storm” conditions further north, but with no moisture flowing north to compliment the otherwise potent atmosphere. In some ways, this isn’t a bad thing; it’s spared the Valley from severe weather before, but this isn’t one of those types of systems, save for a few stronger storms down south, so it’s a little unfortunate we didn’t get some REAL drought busting rain. Perhaps next time!
Nevertheless, as we wrap up today and our weekend, conditions improve in a notable way – by tomorrow morning, we’re all dry, and by tomorrow afternoon, we’re dry AND clearing, with those clouds generally fading deeper into the afternoon and evening hours. You can expect to end up somewhere near 60 for your daytime highs tomorrow, with upper 40s returning by the evening if you have any dinner plans. Winds will be out of the northwest at 10-15mph, so it may be a touch breezy, but it’s nothing we can’t handle (especially after having had some of the wild wind events we saw throughout earlier this year, especially in the springtime).
Also of note for our Lawrenceburg viewers is that the Lawrenceburg Christmas Parade has been CANCELLED for today, Saturday the 2nd due to the poor weather conditions lasting through this evening. Instead, the city will be holding that TOMORROW, Sunday the 3rd at the same scheduled time – and it’s not too hard to see why. Compared to today, we’re doing a lot better. Worth considering is that it will be fairly chilly as temperatures fall back into that 45-50 region by the time we’re heading into the few hours past sunset, but as mentioned, we stay dry and we clear out nicely in time for the parade itself, so be sure to bring a coat and leave the umbrella at home!
Talking big picture, not seeing much to worry about as we head into the workweek. Perhaps the most notable aspect to the conditions this coming week is the brief cooldown in the midweek time frame (upper-40s for daytime highs), but besides this one off, we actually stay reasonably mild and somewhat above average in terms of our high temperatures, and moreover I don’t see many indications of frost for at least the next few days. I can’t rule out some freezing conditions in the Tuesday-Wednesday evening timeframe, but it’s very much on the borderline with the current data, and 40s look to be the primary night-time story as we head into the first full week of December.
Good news is there’s no catch, so to speak – we just look to stay downright good, with those clear to partly cloudy conditions and generally mild to cool temperatures persisting well into this week. I’ve seen some hints of a pattern change in the the next week or two, so we may see more rain down the line, but as I always say with that, “we’ll get there when we get there”. In the mean time, go out and enjoy this week – that gloomy cloud cover won’t be here much longer.
