Frost/Freeze Possible Tonight

Coldest night of the season tonight with a frost/freeze advisory in effect for all of Green Country.  Clear skies through the overnight hours and nearly calm winds together with dry air in place will produce maximum radiational cooling conditions which means temperatures will be dropping quickly after sunset.  The only caveat in this scenario is that the dew point temperatures are still holding around the 40 degree mark for many locations late this afternoon.  However, the air is very dry just above the surface so the thinking is that the dew points will also be dropping tonight.  Bottom line is that morning lows in the mid-upper 30s should be the general rule for the rural locations and upper 30s to near 40 for the urban environments.  At any rate, that is cold enough for patchy frost requiring the protection of tender plants.  As for the more protected, normally cooler valley locations, they could briefly reach the freezing mark; thus the freeze warning for some locations.

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Look for a quick warm-up on Thursday with sunny skies and a more SW breeze.  Together with the dry air in place, that will result in temperatures rebounding into the upper 60s to near 70 for the afternoon hours and the relative humidity dropping to near the 30% level.

Another weak boundary will be pushing through the area on Friday shifting our winds back to northerly, but this system is moisture starved so nothing more than a few clouds are anticipated.  However, the shift in winds will keep temperatures in check with highs in the 60s that afternoon and somewhat cooler for Saturday as you can see on our forecast page.

Another weak boundary may arrive along about Monday and we do expect partly cloudy skies for the Sun/Mon time frame.  However, this system also looks to be moisture starved so nothing more than a few sprinkles are currently anticipated; not enough to even warrant a percentage chance of rain since anything that might fall would not be measurable anyway.

After that, southerly winds kicking in will warm us back up again at least through mid-week.  But, our chances of any additional moisture look to be in the slim to none category as you can see on the 7 day QPF map.  A pretty dry 7 days for much of the country certainly appears to be the case. 

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However, beyond this forecast cycle, there have been some consistent indications from the longer range guidance of a stronger storm system coming our way later next week.  If that verifies, we could see a decent round of showers/storms along about the Thu/Fri time frame, but the timing and intensity of that system will likely change with subsequent model runs.

In fact, the 8-14 day outlook which would include late next week is suggesting most of what moisture falls from that system to be further north and into KS; so we will see how that turns out in the coming days.  At any rate, we are still expecting temperatures to average above normal during that week long period even though there will likely be a brief shot of cooler for a few days late next week. 

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So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot