3/18 – The Chief’s “Clearing Skies, Windy Conditions” Monday Afternoon Forecast

The cooler, drier air has been slow to arrive, with dew points only now starting to drop over southwest Mississippi. The local area will be under a northwesterly upper flow, if only briefly. Surface high pressure currently over the Dakotas will dive southward and be centered near the Louisiana coast by sunset Tuesday. As the drier air arrives today, clouds should diminish and it’ll become a bit on the breezy side by midday. Humidity’s will drop noticeably, to around 30 percent this afternoon. Fortunately, we got a good bit of rain yesterday, or there would have been a few fire weather concerns. The coldest air won`t have arrived this afternoon, and we tend to get a bit of compressional heating across the northern half of the area with northerly winds, so we should see some recovery in temperatures this afternoon to close to 70, with some possibility that might not be warm enough.

Main forecast concern will be overnight lows tonight, with the potential for temperatures near or below freezing across northern portions of the area around sunrise Tuesday. It`s been several weeks since temperatures reached freezing anywhere in the area, and we’re past the mean last freeze date for any of our climate reporting stations, making freeze products necessary in all areas when applicable.+