We’re off to a very chilly start this morning in the Lowcountry as Arctic air has once again taken residence in the eastern half of the country. But as it goes in March, just wait five minutes and it’ll change.

Freezing temperatures this morning

This morning’s temperatures were below normal for January, much less March, as many stations started out around 30. After such a warm February, I am always concerned that these kinds of starts can lead to significant crop damage. Hopefully everyone took precautions to ensure plants and pets were in a safe place last night.

The culprit? A very deep trough of low pressure aloft that’s digging all the way down into Florida. The Simple Water Vapor RGB image above does a nice job of illustrating this. We are looking forward to the ridging that is moving over Texas to make it a little closer to our neck of the woods for the end of the week, which will help temperatures rebound back into the 70s by the weekend. But first, we have one more freezing night ahead for tonight into tomorrow morning.

Another round of severe weather appears possible for Sunday

We’re keeping an eye on Sunday for the potential for another threat of severe thunderstorms as a frontal system presses into the area. Wind shear and instability should be favorable for a few severe storms in the Carolinas. As always, the devil is in the details for these kinds of setups, and there will be lots of refinement to the forecast to come. The fact that the Storm Prediction Center has outlined us in a severe weather risk five days out, though, is an indicator of at least some confidence in the setup, so we’ll want to keep an eye on forecasts. Don’t cancel anything yet! We will know more later this week on the exact concerns.

This week on Carolina Weather Group: Recapping the March 3rd outbreak

We have a jam-packed Carolina Weather Group on tap for tonight. We’ll be discussing the March 3rd tornado outbreak across the Southeast in detail with Brett Adair of WeatherNation and Live Storms Media, Brandon Copic, and Alex Haworth of ChaserWx.net. These gentlemen were on the ground in the tornado zone in Alabama and Georgia this past weekend and will have some unique insights to share. We’ll also be recapping the impacts the tornado outbreak had on the Carolinas, and look ahead to perhaps another severe threat on Sunday.

Carolina Weather Group streams live on Periscope, Facebook Live, and YouTube every Wednesday night around 8:15 PM Eastern. The podcast is generally available the day after recording wherever you get your podcasts, such as Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, or Apple Podcasts. Enjoy the show!