Beautiful Weekend!

Notice the map on our right shows a much milder start to our day with only a few locations below freezing this morning. With such a mild start, look for today to be one of those Chamber of Commerce kind of days with plenty of sunshine, light S or SW surface winds, and afternoon highs well into the 60s.

A weak wind shift will move across the state tonight, stall out and become diffuse before a stronger cold front arrives Sunday night. That will be followed by a brief return to more seasonal weather for Monday and Tuesday before things warm back up later in the week. Given the lack of a strong southerly fetch ahead of these boundaries, they will be moisture starved and therefore dry.

Temperatures will still be quite mild again Sunday. Look for the wind shift to occur around midnight tonight and the northerly winds, dry air, and clear skies should get our morning lows back to near the freezing mark to start the day Sunday. However, lots of sunshine all day long and a light NE wind in the morning becoming more E and perhaps even SE for a time by afternoon should get us well into the 50s for a daytime high.

A surge of colder air will then arrive Sunday night with a brisk northerly wind all day Monday. At least we will have lots of sunshine on Monday but temperatures will still be colder with morning lows in the 20s and daytime highs in the 30s. This is just a glancing blow as the coldest air will remain well E and NE of us and will quickly move on eastward. That means after a cold start Tuesday morning with lows in the lower 20s, our winds should be returning to a more S to SE direction that afternoon. That will get us back into the upper 40s to near 50 so the colder air will not stick around for very long.

In fact, gusty south winds and temperatures well into the 50s are expected for Wednesday and back to near 60 for Thursday. Yet another cold front will arrive late in the day Thursday to bring temperatures back to more seasonal levels for the Friday and Saturday time period. This system also looks to be dry with only a very slight chance of a few showers for the more eastern counties that afternoon.

Bottom line is that the current pattern suggests these incursions of chilly weather will not last long and will be more than made up for by the much milder conditions between them. Also, there are no significant rain makers in the foreseeable future. That means anytime the winds become strong and gusty there will be fire danger concerns.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot