Storms still hit and miss today, but rain coverage starts picking up tomorrow. Cooler temps coming!
Some areas of southern Tennessee saw a bit of rain yesterday afternoon and early evening. Scattered portions of Hardin, northern Wayne, and into Lewis Counties are estimated to have gotten a solid inch of rain in isolated areas under the heaviest downpours yesterday, based on dual-pol radar estimates. Other areas in those counties didn't get quite as much though. If you've missed out on rain the past few days, more is coming with time as we head through the next several days!
All is quiet on the home front across the Tennessee Valley on this Wednesday morning. Just some ground clutter returns on the area radars. Temperatures are starting out in the mid to upper 70s for most everyone with partly cloudy to mostly clear skies.
Partly cloudy skies look to remain in place for today, with afternoon temperatures reaching the lower 90s once again. Heat index values for most of us look to climb into the lower 100s but stay a few degrees show of that heat advisory criteria. The exception is over west Tennessee, from Hardin County westward, where heat index values may reach 105 degrees or so.
Pop-up scattered showers and thunderstorms look to develop again in the early to mid afternoon and carry into the early to mid evening hours. High resolution modeling today shows the main focus of this being on the Tennessee side of the state line, but we can't rule out a stray shower or thunderstorm in north Alabama or Mississippi either. However, even in Tennessee today, showers and storms will remain very hit and miss, with not everybody getting the rain. What storms do form will fade away by 9:00 or 10:00 as we lose the daytime heating, with partly cloudy skies remaining overnight and temperatures headed for the mid 70s for overnight lows.
We do this same song and dance all over again for Thursday into Thursday evening but with one big difference. The coverage of the showers and storms when they move through Thursday afternoon and evening looks to be a good bit more widespread. It's not an "everyone gets a soaking" type ordeal, but high resolution modeling shows a much more organized band of showers and storms moving from northwest to southeast across most of the entire area from mid afternoon until mid evening. Also unlike the last few days, we may see scattered redevelopment late overnight into early Friday morning.
This is the start of the much-advertised higher rain chances that will carry us right on through the weekend. The frontal boundary that's brought all the rain to the Ohio Valley and Midwest sinks southward into our area and then stalls out. Waves of widespread showers and thunderstorms move through at times Friday, Saturday, and Sunday... with no discrimination between daytime and nighttime. These will not be driven or be dependent on daytime heating. Not everyone is going to get rain every single day, but adding all these days together, I think most everyone in the area gets a good soaking rain at some point. The good news is that, because of this, temperatures are on the way down, with daytime highs back in the 80s for Friday into at least the upcoming weekend.
Despite a couple of tropical waves rolling off the coast of Africa, the Atlantic basin is quiet, and we don't expect tropical development for at least the next 5 to 7 days. Background environmental conditions should become more favorable for development in the Atlantic as we head into early August. We will be watching closely.