Warm for now. A little rain Friday into Saturday. Much colder weather arrives.
It's another warm day out there across the Tennessee Valley on this Wednesday. We are mostly sunny across much of the area, and temperatures today are up into the mid or upper 70s for most of us. Interestingly, it's a little cooler on the Alabama side of the line today because a wedge of cooler air has moved into north central and northeast Alabama. Daytime highs this afternoon likely won't climb more than a couple more degrees from where they are now.
Skies stay mostly clear to clear as we head through the evening and overnight. Temperatures drop into the upper 50s and lower 60s this evening and then toward the mid/upper 40s to lower 50s by daybreak for our Thursday morning lows. Clouds will be on the increase Thursday as the upper-level outer cloud shield from Nicole spreads northward. Despite this, we will still see filtered sunshine at times, and daytime highs will again climb into the low to possibly mid 70s. A few light sprinkles or rain showers may spread into our I-65 counties as we head into Thursday late evening.
Showers become more likely as we head after midnight Thursday night into the morning hours of Friday. We may see some locally heavy downpours at times east of I-65, but that looks to stay east of our viewing area. That lifts out Friday afternoon as Nicole's remnants lift into eastern Georgia and the Carolinas. Meanwhile, a cold front will be pushing into the area by late in the day and into the evening, and this will bring MUCH cooler air to the area by the weekend.
As the cooler air moves in Saturday, another weak wave rides through in the flow and brings a few more showers to the area the first half of Saturday. It isn't completely impossible that a sleet pellet or two might mix in with the rain showers Saturday morning, but temperatures will be in the upper 30s to lower 40s, well above freezing. That shifts out of the way by afternoon, and we are back to partially clearing skies for Saturday afternoon and the rest of the weekend.
The big news over the weekend will be the colder air though. Daytime highs over the weekend into early next week only look to make the mid or upper 40s (maybe near 50 toward mid next week). Morning lows Sunday and Monday morning will be well down into the mid 20s. Indications are we will likely stay in below average temperatures well into mid month, if not into at least the start of Thanksgiving week. We have another decent chance of rain showers coming up toward late Monday night and Tuesday of next week as a Gulf low system rides through. Fortunately, temperatures will moderate a bit by then, and despite being in a cooler weather pattern with a Gulf low in place, wintry weather is NOT expected with that system. Put that same system through here in January, and we would probably be having a much different conversation though!