Quieter weather returns to the area for the weekend, and not a moment too soon. We start Saturday in the mid-40s, but a breezy westerly wind will keep temperatures suppressed to the mid-50s despite partly cloudy skies as cool air blows in behind a cold front. Cloud cover decreases overnight and winds calm down, allowing for decent radiational cooling conditions for Sunday morning, when temperatures look to fall back to the mid-30s (and maybe near freezing in more rural areas). It’ll be a brilliantly sunny day, and temperatures will respond nicely, heading into the low 60s in the afternoon. Quiet weather should prevail for much of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, too, with only a few showers possible after sunset; the better risk for rain arrives Tuesday.
Another storm system will impact the area on Friday with gusty winds and some showers and storms in the afternoon and evening hours, with a few pockets of severe weather possible, but certainly not the widespread threat that we saw on Tuesday.
High pressure will be in control for one more day on Thursday. We’ll start the day a little cooler than we did on Wednesday, and certainly much less windy, too. However, a light breeze will still make lows in the mid-30s feel closer to freezing. Temperatures will head to the upper 50s in the afternoon under a mix of sun and cloud cover.
After a day of weather that went more or less as advertised, we get a couple days to dry out before another round of showers and thunderstorms — and maybe some more severe weather — arrives on Friday.
We will stay breezy Wednesday, particularly in the morning, as cooler and drier air blows into the area behind a cold front. We start the day in the low 40s and warm to the mid-50s in the afternoon. A few clouds will be around, but overall it’ll be much sunnier than Tuesday. (Not hard to do!)
Thursday will feature calmer winds and a chillier start. We’ll begin the day in the mid-30s before warming to the low 60s in the afternoon under partly cloudy skies. It should be a fairly quiet, nice day of weather overall.
The quiet doesn’t last, though, as another storm system affects the area on Friday. While it won’t be as windy of a system as Tuesday’s was, it will still bring with it a fairly well-sheared environment which, if paired with enough instability, could yield another round of severe weather. The Storm Prediction Center has the area outlined in a 15% severe weather risk in the Day 4 outlook; we’ll see how this evolves as the rest of the week wears on. For now, though, don’t let the weather radio stray too far…we might need it again later this week.