Good evening, everyone in the foothills! We hope you had a great Tuesday. Tomorrow is Wednesday – we are halfway through the week! Did you see the frost this morning? It was huge! The valley fog froze to the trees, making for a beautiful morning commute. Anyway, tonight will be clear with a cold front moving through the area tomorrow. The cold front won’t have much moisture, so it should be a dry frontal passage. The front will bring a reinforcing shot of cooler air. The weekend should start dry, but a potentially powerful low-pressure system will move north up the coast by Sunday.
Tonight, the high band of cirrus clouds will prevent radiational cooling, meaning temperatures will not be as cold as they were this morning. In Rutherford, Polk, Cleveland, Lincoln, and Gaston Counties, temperatures are forecast to be in the low 30s. Along the I-40 corridor, temperatures should be around 30 degrees. There is no predicted fog in the morning, either.
A dry and cold front from Virginia should arrive in the afternoon, leading to light winds shifting to the northeast. The cirrus clouds will move out as the cold front passes tomorrow night, resulting in clear skies and calming winds. Clearing skies and calming winds will allow for radiational cooling, causing temperatures to drop back to the mid to upper 20s on Thursday morning.
A high-pressure ridge will build up in our area on Thursday. This high-pressure system will dominate our weather through Saturday before it relaxes and moves out of the area on Saturday night. On Thursday, the cold front will keep temperatures in the 40s to low 50s across the region. However, these temperatures will moderate on Friday and Saturday.
On Saturday night, there will be a complex and challenging weather pattern. An upper low-pressure system will move into the southern plains while the northern jet stream will start to dig a trough over the upper midwest. These systems will cause trouble for the southeast on Sunday and Monday. The big question is whether the two jets will phase to create a powerful Noreaster. The GFS model is the most aggressive in the phase and merges the two pieces of energy. The Euro model has also trended towards phasing the energy, but the two pieces still would need to merge before the low can deepen. There is still so much for models to resolve before anyone can develop a conclusive forecast. All model suites indicate the development of a main low-pressure center, but they differ on the location of where exactly it develops. Before knowing where the low-pressure track goes, we must understand where it develops.
Regarding our forecast, we anticipate a dry Saturday, but Sunday is increasingly looking like a wet day. While I have some doubts about the GFS solution regarding the surface low being too far west, there is no denying that moisture will make its way into our area. The heaviest rainfall will occur from Sunday night to Monday, but Sunday could still see a fair amount of light rain and mist throughout the day. There won’t be much cold air to work with, so unfortunately, this will be just another rain event. I apologize to all the winter weather enthusiasts out there. If this were a snow event, it would have been a fantastic opportunity for a big event. However, I’m just daydreaming because it will be all rain.
Most of the United States will experience above-average temperatures over the next six to ten days, with no signs of winter weather for our area over the next two weeks, including Christmas Day.
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