Rain is moving out. Cooler for Saturday. Great Memorial Day Weekend Weather! Rain next week.

Rain and storms are clearing out of the area late this afternoon as the well-advertised cold front moves into the area. This is going to bring much cooler and drier air into the area, allowing temperatures to drop into the low to mid 50s by daybreak on your Saturday under mostly cloudy skies.

Our Memorial Day weekend will stay dry and quiet, but it's going to be much cooler than average to start. Highs on Saturday here locally will only be in the mid to upper 60s from north to south across the viewing area, a good 15 to 20 degrees below seasonal averages for this time of year! We start to warm up heading into Sunday and especially Memorial Day on Monday though, as more sun returns to the area. Highs return to the low to mid 80s for the first half of next week as flow starts to become more southerly across the local area as high pressure shifts eastward. If you're headed down to the Gulf Coast beaches for the holiday weekend, the weather looks great. Partly cloudy to mostly sunny skies are expected. Any rain showers Saturday should stay farther inland. Afternoon highs each day will be in the upper 70s to lower 80s.

Rain chances return to the area for the middle and latter half of next week as deep moisture moves back in and disturbances move through the area. There will be several rounds of rain and storms, but it won't rain the entire time. Locally heavy rainfall is a possibility in this time period, and while we don't see any immediate signals for such, we will be watching for maybe a few strong storms with gusty winds as well. It gets very hard (but not impossible) to get tornadoes as we head into this time of year (unless a tropical system is involved), but it's very easy for even pop-up afternoon storms to produce gusty straight-line winds.