Dry for most of us today. Rain chances aren't far away. Warmer temps coming. Tropics waking up?

We have just a bit more in the way of clouds across the area today than the past few days, but they are mainly fair weather cumulus clouds. This is a sign that moisture is deepening, and if you've been outside today... while it's not bad by any means, you do notice a slight difference in the humidity compared to the last few days. We have a few isolated showers on radar this afternoon over northern Morgan and southern Limestone Counties of Alabama, but most of us are dry and will stay that way today.

That begins to change tomorrow though. Futurecast has a few spotty showers around the area as early as daybreak on Friday, but but afternoon, the model is developing a good number of scattered showers and thunderstorms across the area. I get the idea it might be slightly overdone with this, as it has been the past few days, but other models also support the idea of scattered storms across the immediate area tomorrow midday through evening, and with the deepening moisture already, it makes sense. Because of that, we will be bumping up rain chances for tomorrow, but we are still talking scattered activity that not every single person in our viewing area will see.

That general idea continues right through the weekend into much next week as high pressure shifts to our east and we get a return of southerly flow across much of the Southeast. That means warmer temperatures, deeper moisture, and increasing instability. We just won't have any big disturbances to act as a triggering mechanism for widespread rain. So, isolated to scattered daily showers and storms are expected.

As this happens, the heat begins to return as well, at least to some degree. I don't yet think we will see the kind of heat index values we saw last week, but they will likely approach 95-100 degrees again going into next week as afternoon highs climb into the lower and eventually middle 90s and dewpoints get back into the 70s. This is August in the Tennessee Valley. It's yucky, but this is normally what we expect this time of year.

We are continuing to more vigilantly watch the tropics as well. The tropical wave that just rolled off the coast of Africa over the last 24 hours now has a high chance of development into a tropical depression or tropical storm over the next few days. If that happens, its name will be Fred (this should be interesting). It is still thousands of miles away; so, no imminent threat to the United States if it does indeed develop, but we are getting into the time of year where these waves coming off Africa have a higher chance of making it across the Atlantic. We will be watching carefully.