12/12 – The Chief’s “Slow Warm-Up Ahead” Tuesday Morning Forecast

A departing surface high pressure will continue to induce light north to northeast flow, low Dew-points, and clear skies through this morning. Upper-level clouds will continue to move into the region from the south.

Although the surface high pressure will be centered east of the area, increasing upper-level subsidence aloft will continue. Winds at the surface will remain out of the northeast, but mid-level flow will shift to a more southeasterly component on the southwest periphery of the mid-level ridge centered over Alabama and Georgia. A very gradual period of moisture advection in the mid-levels will take hold, and skies should turn partly to mostly cloudy by Wednesday night. Temperatures will also modify as lows will warm from the upper 30s and 40s on Tuesday night into the 40s and lower 50s by Wednesday night. These warmer lows on Wednesday night will be aided by the increased cloud cover limiting radiational cooling.  Highs will be closer to average in the low to mid 60s each day.

The long term forecast, for the lack of a better word, is a bit of a mess…In some good news, models are actually in a little more agreement than they were yesterday, but still have some large deviations. Knowing this, forecast confidence in the long term remains low at this time.At the surface, high pressure remains over the eastern U.S as an area of low-pressure forms in the Gulf. This will begin late Friday night north of the tip of Mexico while the Euro starts to show this on Saturday in the NW Caribbean. To the west, a frontal boundary associated with the upper trough/closed low moves eastward and eventually enters our area sometime on Saturday. Generally the area that will likely see the biggest impacts regardless of the solution is the marine areas. Winds and waves will increase rapidly into Thursday. Here onshore, rain chances begin to increase Friday and into the weekend.