(9/13/24, 5 pm) Dry air winning the battle of the airmasses

Good Friday afternoon,

When you look at the visible satellite this afternoon, you have the leftovers of Francine located in Arkansas and some moisture trying to organize off the North Carolina Coastline. western North Carolina is essentially stuck in-between the two features leaving the region shrouded in clouds.

Normally, a decaying tropical cyclone located to our west and low level easterly winds would yield a good chance at precipitation along the Blue Ridge, however northeasterly winds aloft are helping shove drier mid-level humidity down into North Carolina and that has cut off what a few days ago was projected to be wetter weather pattern for the weekend.

The loop below is a two-day trend in the model guidance. High pressure over New England has trended stronger and further south and as a result is disrupting moisture from coming in off the Atlantic.

Another look at the moisture field for this week clearly shows how he dry air is winning out across interior sections of The Tarheel State.

The end result is much lower precipitation amounts for the Blue Ridge between now and Monday.

For our coastal neighbors, the National Hurricane Center is still highlighting an area off the Carolina coast for development early next week, now tagged at 40%. Current global models are showing weak tropical or sub-tropical low moving toward the SE North Carolina or Grand Strand Region of South Carolina by Monday delivering organized rainfall for Central and Eastern North Carolina.

Dependent on track, we locally may see an increase of clouds by later Monday and moisture staying mainly east of I-77.

We’ll keep an eye on it…