Sunny and a bit milder today. Warming tomorrow before the next cold front arrives.
After a downright chilly start, and some areas of freezing fog, across the area this morning, we will start to see a bit of a "warming" trend across the Tennessee Valley for your Wednesday. Skies will be mostly sunny to partly cloudy with afternoon highs topping out in the upper 40s, and some of our Alabama communities may even slide up into the lower 50s! There is a very weak disturbance moving through east Texas, Louisiana, and western Mississippi this morning. That may serve to bring an isolated shower today to some of our north-central Alabama counties. We have added a 20% chance of showers today for places like Franklin, Marion, Lawrence (AL), Winston, Cullman, and Morgan Counties of Alabama. However, we think any isolated showers should remain south and southeast of the Shoals area and definitely south of our southern Tennessee counties.
The temperature trend for the next few days shows the warming trend continue on Thursday as gusty southwest winds of 15-25 mph (maybe even a little higher) ahead of the next cold front bring milder air into the area with highs in the mid 50s for most of us, and some of our areas may even get into the upper 50s on Thursday afternoon! We may be bumping up these high temperatures a couple of degrees as we assess the latest forecast data. Then, the cold front arrives Thursday night, ushering cooler air back in for Friday into the weekend with highs dropping back into the 40s. We may not even get out of the upper 30s on Saturday, to be honest. That's most certainly not unheard of at all, but our average high around this time of year is 50 degrees!
That aforementioned cold front approaches the area by Thursday evening and brings a few isolated showers to the area by Thursday evening and overnight. These will mainly be along and north of the U.S. 64 corridor in Tennessee, but we will keep the chance of a stray shower in the forecast for everyone. That should wrap up and move out of the area by Friday morning as skies clear on Friday as the cooler air moves into the area behind the front.
Beyond that, we are watching for the potential for another shower chance at the start of next week, but the latest model data has been trending less organized and drier with that system. We will keep an eye on it for now, but with those trends in mind, we will keep rain chances out of the official forecast for Sunday night and Monday. Keep an eye to the FREE Tennessee Valley Weather App in case we have to make revisions to that forecast...