The Lazy Hazy Days of Late August

Lead Forecaster Daniel Crawley

Good Tuesday evening to everyone, we will take a few minutes to go over the synoptic weather setup for the Western Carolinas for the rest of the workweek and into this weekend.

First off our region saw a good bit of sunshine today and that allowed temperatures to get up into the mid 80’s across the Foothills and Western Piedmont. Thankfully the humidity wasn’t too excessive.

Looking at the visible satellite image, a frontal boundary is to our south roughly along the Interstate 20 Corridor. High pressure over the great lakes will able to push in that somewhat less humid air cutting off rain chances.

Looking at the 500 mb pattern there is a wide area of lower heights across the Southeast US. That has allowed the moisture to pool up to our south and southwest. Meanwhile an upper level ridge is located across the Pacific Northwest and into Western Canada.

This configuration is going to change over the 2-3 days, the heights will fill in across the south as the Western North America ridge will slide east over time centering itself over Southeast Canada and the Northeast US. North Carolina particularly is going to be on the southern edge of this ridge. The end result is going to be a warmer pattern than we have seen in the past couple weeks…we saw proof that just today alone!

Meanwhile a new trough will be forming this weekend across the Rockies and by the end of the current 7-Day forecast will be pushing into the Mississippi River Valley…that could possibly set up an active pattern for early next week.

The overall story for the forecast period, a rebound in temperatures compared to recent times. Enough of a rebound to where some numbers could briefly rise above normal.

For reference, the average hi/low for Marion in the last ten days of August is 85/64 and for Lincolnton the numbers are 86/65…