Dry and warm today. Rain and storms Thursday. Another shot of cold air to follow.
We are starting out with another quiet morning on this Wednesday. Temperatures are in the low to mid 40s for most of us, although the airport observation at Lawrenceburg has snuck down to 39 degrees. We've seen the clouds break up a bit along the Highway 43 corridor of Tennessee and Alabama, although our Pulaski skycam at UT Southern still shows a pretty thick cloud deck out there. Live VIPIR Radar is quiet out there this morning, and we expect it to continue that way as we head through our Wednesday.
By 8:00 AM, many of us will be rebounding into the low to mid 50s as skies become mostly sunny. By midday, as a southerly wind of 5 to 10 mph begins to crank up, we will warm into the upper 60s, and we will be heading again into the low to mid 70s by afternoon for daytime highs. Futurecast is likely once again running a few degrees too cool on afternoon temperatures. It was doing the same both on yesterday and Monday, and with no big weather changes, there's no reason for the same to not be true today.
Skies start to cloud up as we head into the evening and overnight. This, combined with the southerly wind, will keep temperatures milder overnight. We only look to drop into the mid 50s tonight before showers start approaching by the daybreak hours of Thursday morning. The main rain action moves in during the mid morning to midday hours if the latest run of the Futurecast model is correct. It has the band of rain and a few embedded rumbles of thunder moving in roughly between 8:00 AM and Noon on Thursday. Outside of any storms, we may see wind gusts of 20-30 mph Thursday, but a storm or two in the line may have a 30-40 mph wind gust. We do not expect any severe storms with this line. That will be moving out by midday, with cooler and drier air moving in behind the front. Scattered breaks in the cloud cover by the afternoon will allow us to reach the mid 60s behind the band of rain and storms, before the stronger push of cold air moves in behind the front during the evening.
The big story after the rain moves out Thursday afternoon will be the cooler air moving in behind the cold front. We wake up to temperatures Friday morning near the 40 degree mark, with upper 30s very possible in rural areas. Afternoon temperatures may struggle to get into the upper 50s to near 60 degrees. A second disturbance trailing the front moves across Friday with an increase in cloud cover and the outside chance of a sprinkle or light shower. The big cold air moves in over the weekend. Daytime highs on Saturday may not even reach 50 degrees! And we look to start near the freezing mark by Saturday morning. Temperatures don't moderate beyond the mid 50s on Sunday before another reinforcement to the cold air moves in early next week. There are some indications that morning lows during the first half of next week may trend toward the mid and upper 20s.