5/8 – The Chief’s “Summertime Pattern” Monday Morning Forecast

A line of showers & t-storms moving across SW Mississippi should continue to slowly spread/work east-southeast through the pre-sunrise hours and slide east through 9 a.m. before likely slacking off…maybe even slightly earlier than that. Whatever cloud cover from this convection should start to burn off and thin out allowing for decent heating late morning and early afternoon. This activity will refire this afternoon with no real strong/well defined feature to grab onto for the current activity. Even with that possible piece of energy moving in later today the models aren’t advertising high precip chances and generally just have around 20-40% for most of the area. The biggest concern today is frequent cloud to ground lightning, brief heavy downpours, gusty winds, and maybe even some small hail.

Convection should start to slack off as we move into the evening but a few showers will probably persist well into the evening. Then on Tuesday the forecast doesn’t get any easier. The high pressure will continue to try and re-establish itself over the central CONUS and into the northwestern Gulf but all models are indicating a cut off low getting stuck in this very light steering regime, once again trying to show this Rex Block pattern over TX and southern Plains.

The stout central US high pressure isn’t going to allow that a Pacific disturbance to just race through as it closes off over the four corners Wednesday but it should help to draw the TX low northward into the southern Plains and Ozarks.

The trend will continue the summer-like weather pattern of afternoon showers and t-storms. Through the end of the week we are between upper level high pressure just to the east and a low over the Plains and associated trough to our west. At the surface we have high pressure intruding from the east extending all the way to the Atlantic. By the weekend, the upper low has progressed into the upper mid-west, but the high pressure stays in place over the eastern US. The only impact from this change in pattern is that winds transition to easterly, but this really has little effect on the overall weather.