Quiet weather today, Storms return tomorrow overnight, Easter weekend looks a bit wet at times

Last night was definitely a rocky night across the Tennessee Valley as a line of thunderstorms moved through the area and produced fairly widespread severe weather. Here are some of the local storm reports across our area from the past 24 hours, and this shows the widespread nature of the damage across southern middle Tennessee, northwest Alabama, and northeast Mississippi. Several areas had trees down, power lines down, roof damage, and widespread power outages.

We are thankful that the weather is much more quiet today! Skies are completely clear behind the cold front that moved through, and temperatures are very comfortable this afternoon, ranging from the mid 60s to around 70 degrees! We will enjoy this quiet weather though, as we know it won't last for too long.

Skies stay clear as we head through tonight and into tomorrow. This allows temperatures to fall back into the 50s this evening after sunset and then into the low to mid 40s by daybreak on our Good Friday. We stay mostly sunny to partly cloudy for much of the daytime hours, and with more of a southerly wind ahead of the next frontal boundary, we look to climb into the mid to upper 70s. A few folks in north Alabama may be near 80 degrees for a daytime high. Most of the evening will be quiet as well, but clouds will be on the increase. Then, after 10PM and toward midnight, showers and thunderstorms will start to develop ahead of a bigger line of storms moving in from the north. This will be the start of showers and storms that will east through the predawn hours before the main storm action shifts south of our area by the mid morning of Saturday.

For this band of storms that works through the area between Midnight and 6:00 AM Friday overnight into Saturday morning, the Storm Prediction Center has placed the area in a Level 1 of 5 risk of severe storms. This is a very marginal, low-end risk, but one or two storms may produce wind gusts of 40-60 mph or hail ranging from pea size to maybe nickel or quarter size briefly. While we can never 100% rule out a tornado with a severe storm, the overall tornado risk is as close to zero as is possible. There will be a stable layer of air from the ground to about 5,000 ft, and this will make it VERY hard for damaging winds or rotation to reach the ground. Still, we will be watching carefully just in case.

The overall weather patter for the Easter weekend into the start of next week looks unsettled with periods of showers and a few storms at times. It won't be an all day washout any day, though. If you keep an eye on the radar and have plans that are adaptable to time shifts because of the weather, there's a reasonable chance you can still fit in those church activities, Easter egg hunts, picnics, and other outdoor activities you may have planned. The good news is that while we will have a couple of cold fronts moving by during this period, we don't expect any really cold weather to move in. Afternoon highs the next 5 to 7 days will range from the mid 60s to the mid 70s with the passage of each front, and morning lows... even at their coldest... will be well above freezing, in the 40s or 50s, with the exception of Friday night into Saturday morning, when it may stay in the low to mid 60s ahead of those early morning storms.