Lead Forecaster Daniel Crawley
Good Friday afternoon to everyone, the Labor Day Weekend is here…the unofficial end to summer. However Mother Nature may try to differ with us a little bit.
Late summer warmth and humidity is progged to return to the Western Carolinas. Infact, the process is slowly underway as of Friday afternoon. Humidity is making a gradual return after dealing with two days of lower dewpoints. We are only going up from here.
Synoptically we have a trough to our west and a weak 500 mb ridge across the Southeast. Flow which has been out of the northwest has turned back to the southeast today and that will continue through Saturday.
A few showers and maybe a rumble of thunder is possible for Saturday but it appears that chances will increase into Sunday and Labor Day itself. By later Sunday, any height influence across the Western Carolinas should be as a result of the trough. Deep southwest flow takes over at 500mb with southeast winds at the surface to 850mb (5,000 ft).
This will serve to increase storm coverage to a more scattered basis. There is no organized severe weather threat expected. Just looking at locally heavy showers with some lightning threat.
Southern Cutoff Low Next Week?
The weather pattern may become a bit more complex after the holiday weekend, most global computer model guidance is indicating a trough to cut off somewhere near the Mississippi River and then meander through the Lower Mississippi River Valley by next weekend.
These upper lows are notorious for doing things that guidance can’t predict several days out. This kind of setup also sets up the potential for a lot of Gulf of Mexico moisture to get entrained into the Southeast. This is something that will need to be monitored as we go into next week for enhanced precipitation chances.
