Yesterday the pesky clouds hung around for a while. They didn’t really break up until late in the day. However, today we are going to have lots of sunshine from start to finish. High pressure has finally built into the region, and this will block a lot of the clouds to our south.
There’s a weak area of low pressure to our south. That will send a few extra clouds towards the southern Outer Banks, but everybody else will have lots of sunshine. We had a cold start to the day. Temps were in the 20s with a few 30s this morning. However, we’ll heat up fast today. Along with the sunshine we have dry air and a light south wind developing. So high temps will rise to the low-mid 50s this afternoon.
It will be cooler right near the shore and on the Eastern Shore. High temps will be in the upper 40s there. Tomorrow the high pressure zone will slide east slightly. This will let the wind pick up a little more out of the southwest. We’ll have lots of sunshine again. So high temps will push up to near 60 degrees.
A weak cool front will move into the region tomorrow, but should fall apart. I think it will be more of a wind shift with winds turning from southwesterly to westerly for a time. Either way we’ll stay dry.
We’ll have mild/dry weather on Friday. High temps will be near 60 degrees again with fair skies. Then we’ll be warm on Saturday as well. High temps are currently aiming for the mid 60s. The average high temps is in the low 50s for this time of year. I mentioned it before that it has been a while since we had a warm/dry day on the weekend. Right now it looks like that is going to happen on this next Saturday.
However, a strong cold front will move into the region on Sunday. There will be an offshore low forming as well. The models are handling these features differently. The GFS (this morning) is showing rain during the day here with snow to our northwest.
It then has the precip changing to a mix in the evening with some snow showers overnight.
It has gone back and forth on the moisture and the coverage for this over the past couple of days. The European model recently backed off of the snow, and it has more of a melting wintry mix. It is warmer and drier overall. (At least the latest run)
It actually kicks out the precip by Sunday night. It barely has any accumulations, but the GFS has a little bit. We’ll start to get some more details about this in tomorrow’s forecast. It should be in-range of the NAM model tomorrow as well. It is important though as many will be out somewhere watching the Big Game. So stay tuned for updates.
While we are warming up here locally, we are not alone! Temps will be above average over the majority of the country today through Friday.
In fact it is going to be so warm/hot in California that some heat alerts are being issued. This is from today through Sunday evening. This will effect people that are heading out there for the Superbowl. Strong high pressure north of California is driving downsloping winds off of the mountains. Air tends to warm as it sinks. It also dries out. So this will produce some record heat out there. High temps could be near 90 degrees for a couple of days. Wow!
Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler
