We’re still quite comfortable this morning, and well below average with temperatures, but we’re not quite as cool as we were early yesterday morning for most areas. As of the time I’m writing this, temperatures are still in the low to mid 60s in quite a lot of places, with the 50s, restricted to north of Highway 64 in southern middle Tennessee. We still have a few hours left for them to drop though before we begin our morning climb. These somewhat milder temps are thanks to a little bit more in the way of cloud cover compared to the last couple of mornings. That cloud cover acts as an insulating blanket and slows down the rate of radiational cooling during the overnight hours.
The weather will generally be pretty nice again for today, but with some subtle changes. We’re looking to be a couple degrees warmer today, with daytime highs topping out areawide between 85 and 90 degrees. While we will have plenty of sunshine, there will also be a little more in the way of clouds today. Also unlike the last few days, there is a slight chance for a couple of stray showers or thundershowers as we head through the midday and afternoon hours today. The chance of rain is only 20%; so, don’t get excited. Just don’t be surprised if you encounter a stray downpour… but if you do, it won’t last long or amount to much. We look to stay partly cloudy to mostly clear through tonight with lows becoming milder, into the mid to upper 60s. Friday is when our warming trend starts to kick in, but not excessively so just yet. Areawide, daytime highs will climb into the lower 90s with mostly sunny skies.
Here is a quick peak at our high resolution Futurecast model to give a visual idea of the possible shower coverage today, and you can see we’re not talking much! The vast majority of us will stay completely dry today. We just can’t rule out a couple of isolated showers or thundershowers in the afternoon before things fade away during the early evening as we lose daytime heating. Keep in mind that this model has often overdone rain coverage this summer; so, it will probably be less widespread than what is even shown here…
If you watched my weather shows last night or if you catch Ben Luna’s weather show this morning, you will see that we were highlighting very low rain chances starting to return at the beginning of next week. After both mine and his shows were recorded overnight, the latest data has trended drier for the extended period, causing us to remove those already low rain chances for early next week. So, if we don’t see a stray shower or two this afternoon, we look to stay dry across the area until AT LEAST late next week. In the meantime, we look to continue with mostly sunny to partly cloudy skies right on through the weekend and the beginning of next week.
We will be in the low to mid 90s as early as tomorrow and the weekend, but it’s really early next week when the hotter weather pattern really cranks up. The trough of low pressure in the upper-levels over the eastern U.S. allowing our cooler temps will shift out into the Atlantic and be replaced by a ridge of upper-level high pressure moving in. This will cause subsidence (sinking motion) in the atmosphere, and this time of year, that means warming temperatures. We look to climb into at least the upper 90s for Monday through Wednesday, and we expect several areas (especially northwest Alabama and northeast Mississippi) to make it into the lower 100s. We may even have to bump the high temps for Tuesday and Wednesday into the lower 100s for areawide if current trends continue. That means, within the span of a week, temperatures go from being as much as 10 degrees below average to as much as 10 degrees above average! It’s certainly not unheard of this time of year though. If there is any good news to report despite the heat, it will be that the dewpoints control themselves and stay in the 60s next week instead of running up into the mid/upper 70s as they often can during heat waves here. That will keep our heat index values closer to the air temperatures, which will certainly be hot enough!
We continue to watch the tropics, as we always do this time of year. There is some disorganized storminess in the Intertropical Convergence Zone out in the Atlantic, but nothing that looks to imminently get its act together within the next seven days. We are rapidly heading into the heart of the Atlantic basin’s peak of the hurricane season though. Climatologically speaking, things almost always ramp up as we head into early June, and the statistical peak of the season is September 10th. We will be watching carefully in the coming days and weeks for any signs of the tropics trying to come back to life again!
