Today we had some gusty conditions.  Winds were mostly out of the west/northwest.  Temperatures were allowed to climb into the upper 50s to lower 60s as the sun shone brightly.  Ironically, a cold front moved through early in the day.  We just didn’t cool down though.  I wonder if downsloping played a role.  When the winds come off of the mountains they sink.  Sinking air likes to warm.  It’s a subtle warming, but sometimes it adds a couple of degrees to a forecast.  Even though the mountains are far away, we can still feel the effect.  Temps are dropping now.  We’re in the upper 40s already this evening.  We’re aiming for the upper 20s to lower 30s overnight.  Tomorrow will be cooler, dry, and breezy.  Speaking of dry.  The U.S. drought monitor has been updated.  Part of the viewing area is in the 2nd tier (moderate drought).  Namely Northeast North Carolina up through the Southside.  We didn’t get much rain the other day, and we aren’t expecting much in the 7 day forecast.  Maybe on Sunday….Cue the trumpets.

Jon Cash has been talking about Sunday’s forecast for a while.  A potent trough of low pressure is expected to move through the region.  However, the models have changed quite a bit over the last 2 days.  The GFS and the Navy model are showing mostly dry conditions for the day.  I’d just about write it off, but the NAM has a lot of precipitation from late morning until late afternoon.  It looks like scattered rain showers mixing with some snow.  Since we have a habit of seeing snow above 32 degrees around here, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were pockets of just snow.  That is if the NAM were to pan out.  Whether or not we get frozen precipitation, it will be warm enough that it will melt.  For now my forecast for Sunday is for scattered showers mixing with a little snow at times.  No accumulations.  Tomorrow it will be in range of the Hi res WRF and our in-house model.  We can start doing more detail then. 

Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler