Dry weather comes to an end soon. No overly cold air in sight. Pattern unsettled though.

Beautiful sunny skies are in place across the Tennessee Valley today in response to high pressure near the area. This is making for not much of a single cloud in the sky today and temperatures warming close to 50 degrees already by the midday hour, and we will be climbing into the lower 50s as we head into the afternoon. Clouds will be on the increase going into the evening as our next minor weather system approaches from the northwest. This will keep temperatures from falling too much with overnight lows remaining in the mid 30s.

That disturbance moves through the area on Tuesday, bringing with it a good bit of cloud cover. Afternoon highs still look to get into the lower 50s despite the mostly cloudy skies. There may be a few showers along with the system, especially over northern Alabama, but don't expect a lot of rain. The majority of us will stay dry with this system as it pushes through.

With a more or less zonal pattern in place this week across the area, temperatures won't stray too far from seasonal averages. Afternoon highs look to vary from the upper 40s to the low/mid 50s and overnight lows from the upper 20s to the mid 30s. Variations will come from individual weather systems that pass through, but we see no large scale organized pushes of colder air for the next week or more.

The southwest flow aloft does invite more organized rain chances back into the area for the second half of the week though. The front that moved through late last week comes back northward as a warm front and then stalls across the general region as it becomes situated parallel to the upper-level flow. As disturbances ride along that, it provides a focus for showers across the area. The most widespread and heaviest rain appears to be late Wednesday night and especially on Thursday. Periods of rain are likely then, and some of the rainfall could be locally heavy. A good 2-3 inches of rain looks to fall over the area over the next week with a lot of that being near the Thursday timeframe. We will continue to monitor smaller-scale details in case localized flooding becomes a threat. That system moves east of the area as we head into Friday and the weekend with the front not really going anywhere. We catch a break in the widespread rain chances though before the next weather system ejects out of the Southwest.

That system ejects out into the Plains and Mississippi Valley toward the start of next week. By this time, a greater push of warm, humid air should move northward out of the Gulf of Mexico. It's becoming increasingly likely that we will have a period of rain and thunderstorms to content with as the weather system moves through our area between Monday afternoon and early Tuesday morning.