The quiet and warm weather continues across the Tennessee Valley on this Tuesday. The ridge of high pressure in the upper-levels strengthens overhead, and that means we’ll see less in the way of cloud cover than Monday and we also shouldn’t see any stray showers for today. High temps will be a couple degrees warmer this afternoon as well, with just about everyone into at least the upper 80s and a few folks over north Alabama getting as warm as 90 or 91 degrees by the afternoon. We’ll start to get more of an established southerly wind this afternoon and evening. That will bring a few clouds back in overnight, and the winds mixing up the lower atmosphere combined with that means that overnight lows will be a bit on the milder side tonight, in the upper 60s to lower 70s.
Wednesday will be the day that our weather pattern begins to gradually change across the region. The southerly low-level winds from the high pressure shifting east will continue to bring moisture northward from the Gulf. This will result in increasing clouds for the day, although there will still be sun at times. It will also result in maybe a couple of showers during the day. Daytime highs will still be warm, between 85 and 90 across the area once again. Off to the northwest, showers and thunderstorms will be crossing the Mississippi River by the evening hours. These will be significantly weakening as they move in during the overnight hours, but it’s looking more like they will survive long enough to bring us some moderate to heavy downpours and a few rumbles of thunder into the overnight hours and the early morning portion of Thursday.
Additional scattered showers and thunderstorms will be possible Thursday as the approaching front stalls just northwest of the area. That sets us up for what is currently the highest confidence in more widespread rain and thunderstorms on Friday as a disturbance rides the front just to our northwest and provides a focusing mechanism for more widespread activity across the area. At minimum, scattered hit-or-miss showers and storms will continue through the weekend into early next week as we remain in a warm, humid air mass and the upper-level storm track not too far away. As the upper-level ridge starts to strengthen again but this time farther west over the Southern Plains, we may need to start watching for a pattern going into next week that may support thunderstorm complexes moving in from the northwest. We’ll sort out those details as we get closer! Daytime highs will be in the lower 80s late in the week with more widespread clouds and rain, and then back into the mid to upper 80s for the weekend as showers and storms become more scattered and we get at least a little more in the way of intervals of sunshine.
