3/20 – Payton’s Tuesday Evening Forecast

Cooler and drier air will continue to stream into the central Gulf coast region through Wednesday as surface high pressure builds from the plains into the Mississippi Valley and an upper level trough slides east towards the eastern seaboard. Clear skies and light to near calm winds in most areas tonight should allow the low temperatures to drop into the low to mid 40s. The very dry airmass is expected to result in very low humidity values down around 25 percent over most areas during peak heating on Wednesday and 25 to 30 percent on Thursday. Continued clear skies and light winds Wednesday night should again allow the temperatures to drop to values similar to tonight.

Northwest flow aloft and surface high pressure will keep the forecast area dry on Thursday with moderating high temperatures returning closer to the seasonal normals. Upper level troughs on both the west and east coast regions will be gradually sliding east which will allow the shortwave ridge to move over and east of the forecast area over the weekend. Southerly surface winds and rising heights aloft will allow the highs on Friday to warm 3 to 5 degrees higher than Thursday. Southwest flow will become more active in the southern stream out of Mexico and Texas, so the next initial weak shortwave trough may bring our next chance of showers about Monday into Tuesday, but it appears it should be dry and rather warm this weekend with highs reaching near 80 to the lower 80s.