Tropical Storm Fred in the Gulf. Grace and TD 8 also on the board. Local rain chances.

Showers and thunderstorms are developing this afternoon in scattered areas across southern middle Tennessee and occasionally down into northwest Alabama. Not all of you will get rain today, but for those of you that do, it may be heavy at times. The clouds and showers are keeping temperatures down quite a bit today, with most of us either in the upper 70s to lower 80s, although Lawrenceburg's reading has gotten rain-cooled even further recently.

We continue to carefully monitor Tropical Storm Fred along the Gulf Coast. Fred is very close to making landfall this afternoon near Port St. Joe and Apalachicola, Florida. Fred's remnant circulation will then track up to near Atlanta before heading into the eastern Kentucky area. On this track, the heaviest rain, highest winds, and any type of tornado threat will be well off to our south and east.

In fact, Fred's track may actually help to reduce rain chances across the area locally for Tuesday and Wednesday from what they otherwise would be. Over the weekend, with a farther west track, we were beginning to get concerned that Fred's circulation would interact with the washed out frontal boundary near our area and enhance rain chances. Now, however, it looks like that happens off to our east. Fred's circulation may actually temporarily circulate drier air into the area, and along with the sinking motion found on the far outer edges of a tropical system, our showers and storms for Tuesday and Wednesday (while still out there) will probably be much more isolated. Higher rain chances come back Thursday, Friday, and Saturday though as we get back into deeper moisture and Fred's circulation gets out of the picture.

Meanwhile, we also have Tropical Depression Grace and Tropical Depression #8 (soon to be Tropical Storm Henri) on the board. The good news is that it looks like neither of these will affect the United States coastline. High pressure ridging is trending stronger in the wake of Fred, pushing Grace's track farther south. It now looks like Grace will track south of Cuba, toward the Yucatan Peninsula and eventually northern Mexico. T.D. #8 will track westward across the Atlantic through Thursday or so, but then hook back northeastward away from the United States in response to a disturbance embedded in the jet stream flow approaching from the west.