Good Saturday afternoon to everyone,
Mid-August weather is well known for its transitional nature here across North Carolina as we are on the latter end of summer and occasionally we get teases of more comfortable early fall-like weather. We like to call it “Faux Fall”…because we know just the slightest shift in winds can bring back high humidity and heat.
We are going to have this very setup over the next seven days across The Tarheel State, for today we have a trough over the Great Lakes and a cold front associated with the trough that will help fire up additional thunderstorms this afternoon, tonight and into a part of Sunday. Today’s storms will have a marginal severe weather and excessive rain threat. Wet microbursts are possible with the strongest of cells.
As we get into early next week the Great Lakes trough will move into the Mid-Atlantic, strengthen and deliver northwest flow into North Carolina for the upcoming work week.
This trough will have some punch as we will push out the humidity starting Sunday and by Monday-Tuesday, a very refreshing airmass takes over leading to below normal temperatures for a good part of the forecast period.
Broad high pressure to our north will settle in Tuesday-Thursday leading to sunny, comfortable day time weather conditions with cool and calm nights. With the cool, calm air in place, patchy fog will develop in traditional sheltered and wetland areas at night.
Toward the end of the week the boundary between this taste of Faux Fall and the usual August heat and humidity may become active along the Gulf Coast as weak low pressure could form close to Florida and drift west. That could turn the surface flow to easterly across North Carolina allowing clouds to increase with shallow Atlantic moisture.
The Bottom Line
Once we get rid of the storm threat over the next 24-plus hours, a really nice run of days next week looks to be setting up. It really shows in the numerical guidance as we could see morning temperatures on multiple occasions down into the 50’s with daytime highs staying below normal for the latter-third of August!
