Good Saturday afternoon to everyone, we are getting to that point of the year where mother nature begins to lose her firm grip on summer and we begin to see the signs of Autumn’s return.
Here at least in the short term late-summer like weather remains tough across the Carolinas as a broad area of heights continues to exist. The weather today perfect shows that as we will have a good bit of sunshine today and high humidity. But as the weekend comes to an end high pressure will begin to slide off the coast. That will lead to a return of showers and thunderstorms especially by Monday…
Next week features some significant changes especially at the jet stream level and that will have a pretty significant impact on the weather. Ridging will be replaced by a trough that will move into the Eastern US by mid to late week. That trough will deliver increased rain chances to the Western Carolinas and ultimately an airmass change…
Rainfall amounts could reach the 1-2 inch range for some locations between now and mid week.
Now that we are getting into the last half of September, any trough that forms now has access to colder air from the northern latitudes. We will begin to see that work into the equation across the Central and Eastern US. As you can see on the video loop, the greens and blues on the map indicate where 5000 ft temperatures will be below normal for the time of the year. The Carolinas and the Southern Appalachians are projected to get a couple good shots of autumn-like air between now and the end of the month.
You can track the first bout of colder air that is expected to move into the Carolinas late this week. The front is still to our west on Wednesday but it continues to move east and will pass through the Western Carolinas Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.
By Friday, broad high pressure will be overhead the Southeast US and the memory of a warm, muggy airmass will be just that…a memory!
Temperatures starting on Thursday will tumble down to the 60’s and 70’s during the daytime. The most refreshing change will be at night and the early mornings where lows will be in the 40’s and lower 50’s.
For our friends in the North Carolina High Country, you may begin to see some upper 30’s on a few of the mornings late week with 50’s and 60’s during the day. This will begin to turn on the fall color show in the higher elevations.