Blog: Rain Moves in! Becoming Chilly And Soggy!

Moisture is on the way. Rain is on the way. Changes are on the way… This morning it was a little damp and chilly across the region. However, the rain was still off to our southwest. High pressure is slowly moving away from our region. There is a weak area of low pressure near southern Alabama and southern Georgia.

Notice that there is a large area of rain well northeast of the surface low. This is actually caused by overrunning. This is when a warm/humid airmass pushes up over a cooler airmass. This basically squeezes out the moisture from the atmosphere and causes rain to form. So today we will see the rain steadily increase. We’ll have some light rain in the region by midday. Then during the afternoon rain will become widespread, and it may be heavy in places.

The rain will be heavy at times during the evening commute. It could cause some ponding on the roads. So allow for extra time to make your way home from work. This will also be a soaking rain during the Friday night football games. There will be a breeze picking up near the shore by the evening as well. A mess! There may be a few thunderstorms near coastal North Carolina. A couple of those could be on the strong side. An isolated tornado is not out of the question, but it’s a low chance. This is where some of the warmer/more humid air will move in tonight. So that’s why. After midnight the widespread rain will taper off. The area fof low pressure will quickly move north. We’ll have a few showers in the morning Saturday. Then we’ll only see some isolated showers for the rest of the day. The models do hint at one last small area of showers quickly sweeping through during the evening. So I’d say there is a 30% chance of rain briefly on Saturday evening.

The wind won’t be bad today. It will be out of the east at 5-10mph with 10-15mph winds near the shore. By the evening and later tonight we could have some gusts between 25-35mph. There could be a few gusts up to 40mph over the Outer Banks at that time.

However, as the surface low will quickly move to our north tomorrow morning, the stronger winds will be brief. So tomorrow after some breeziness in the morning, the winds will only be out of the west/southwest at 10-15mph for the rest of the day. This will limit the chance for any tidal flooding. I think we are only looking at a little nuisance tidal flooding during high tide tonight and tomorrow.

While very limited tidal flooding is expected, we may have some localized flooding from the rain itself. Between midday today and late tomorrow we could pick up about 1-2″ of rain in the region.

We’ll be partly cloudy on Sunday with highs in the 60s with dry conditions. Then we’ll have some more rain Monday morning, but we’ll dry out in the afternoon. Highs will be in the 60s. We’ll be pretty mild/warm next week. In fact the high temps on Wednesday will rise into the low-mid 70s. Things look mild and dry for Halloween at this time.

We had such a long stretch of hot weather for months. Then we became pretty chilly for a couple of weeks (I’m not complaining). One thing that may have contributed to our cooler weather….Very warm weather in Alaska. For a little while they have had record warm air in place. Here is the article with more information: Record Warmth In Alaska.

With the warmth comes upper level ridging. Through teleconnections this lets the jetstream buckle (dip) more to the east. That dip in the jetstream then allowed colder air to dump southeast. Theoretically! This pattern will probably change for us next week.

Finally, there is a weak disturbance in the central Atlantic. It will likely become a tropical depression or storm later today.