After a snowy Monday, temperatures moderate. Showers early Friday, and then a weekend chill down.
Temperatures are starting out chilly for your Tuesday morning with many locations down into the mid and upper 20s. That's worrisome for at least the early and mid-morning hours because moisture was not able to dry on all the roadways and bridges, and that raises the concern for black ice in spots across the area. Fortunately, skies will start mostly sunny today once fog burns off, and that solar radiation will start the melting process on the roads this morning even before air temperatures get above freezing by late morning. Highs this afternoon top out between the mid 40s to as warm as maybe close to 50 degrees in spots. That will definitely allow most of the remaining snow to melt off and for moisture on roads to dry off so that we don't expect travel conditions again tonight when temperatures again drop below freezing.
The storm system that brought the well-expected snow to the Tennessee Valley has moved off the East Coast out near the Carolinas, and drying conditions continue to shift into our area thanks to high pressure building in from the west. Because of that, we look to stay dry for at least the next few days across our area.
Today's temperatures in the mid and upper 40s is the start of a moderating trend that will actually get us into the low to mid-50s on Thursday ahead of the next cold front that stands to bring a few isolated showers to the area Thursday night into Friday. There is some discrepancy among the various computer models with the timing of the front, with the American based models (like the GFS and our Futurecast above) bringing the showers and the cold front in overnight Thursday night and the Euro model holding that off until Friday. Regardless, we don't expect widespread rain, but a few isolated to scattered showers are possible. Then, cooler air moves in behind the front, and by Saturday, we may stay in the mid to upper 30s for highs. Our current forecast for Sunday going into early next week is for gradually moderating temperatures again, but as we assess new data, those numbers may have to be bumped down... at least a couple of degrees.