Thursday, October 10, 2013

Warmer, Mainly Dry into the Weekend

By Jay Grymes & Steve Caparotta

Many awakened this morning to pockets of locally-heavy fog ... and many of us can expect a repeat for Friday’s sunrise. 
You’ve likely noticed the increased humidity over the past couple of days.  We’ll continue to see a slow increase in dew points (the measure of low-level moisture) through that day on Friday and right into Saturday.  Upper 80°s will be the rule for highs across most WAFB neighborhoods for Friday and the weekend ... add in the increased humidity and afternoons will feel almost summer-like.
But we’re keeping the forecast “dry” for the most part over the next three days, even though the mornings will be quite a bit more humid compared to the beauties we enjoyed earlier in the week.  Red Stick area residents can expect mid to upper 60°s near sunrise for Friday and the weekend -- that’s why we’re prepping for fog each morning. Even so, the dry weather means good news for Friday’s ‘Live After Five’ and high school football.  And while it will be quite warm in Death Valley for game-time and for Jaguar tailgating ‘on the bluff,’ there shouldn’t be any weather worries for Saturday afternoon and evening. 

Okay, we can’t entirely rule out a rogue shower during the course of the day on Saturday, but the chances for a passing shower seem so low that we won’t even tag a percentage to it.
Even Sunday stays mainly dry, with less than a 20% chance of afternoon showers in the area.
Our forecast into early next week sneaks low-end rain chances (20% or less) into the outlook for Monday and Tuesday and southerly flow off the Gulf will mean muggy mornings with sun-up temps remaining in the mid to upper 60°s.  More clouds for Monday and Tuesday should allow for a modest dip in afternoon highs, but plan on highs in the mid to upper 80°s both days -- with the humidity those days will be a far cry from the great autumn days we’ve enjoyed recently.
As we get into the mid-week, our confidence falls off regarding the extended outlook.  Our two key models -- the American GFS and the European ECMWF -- are at odds regarding both the timing and the forward progress of an anticipated mid-week frontal boundary.  But that’s far enough down the road that we have time to see whether the models work out their differences.  In the meantime, let’s just plan on taking advantage of a dry, albeit very warm, weekend.
In the tropics, we continue to watch a tropical wave in the east-central Atlantic.  While the wave looks like it has a fairly good chance of developing into a tropical cyclone (a tropical depression or tropical storm) in the coming days, the early consensus on the future track is already showing a turn to the northwest.  So the chances of this system making the trip all the way into the Gulf are very low; in addition, history shows us that storms in that part of the basis at this time of year have very little hope of tracking far enough to the west to get into the Gulf.  Bottom line: it looks like we can relax when it comes to this disturbance.

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