11/8 – The Chief’s “Dense Morning Fog” Wednesday Morning Forecast

Patchy dense fog has formed across portions of southeast LA and southern MS this morning and could become more widespread toward sunrise. Dense fog development will remain possible on Thursday morning the same areas. High pressure centered over the Mississippi River Valley this morning, with a weakness situated along New England extends from the Canadian Prairie Provinces to Nevada. At the surface, high pressure was centered near the Florida-Georgia line with low pressure over Kansas. The main forecast concern over the next 36 hours will be fog. Conditions tonight should be somewhat similar to what we are seeing this morning, with the only real potential limiting factors are if we get too much cirrus cloud cover, or winds do not decouple at the surface. At this point, that doesn’t appear real likely. With several ongoing wildfires, we’ll continue to have isolated locations where visibilities drop to near zero around sunrise.

We should mix out the fog/smoke pretty quickly by about 9 AM in most locations, so I don’t expect that to be much of a hindrance on high temperatures. Most areas should get into the lower and middle 80s again, except the immediate Mississippi coastal cities where winds off Mississippi Sound could hold things in the upper 70s. The forecast highs for much of the area are about 2 degrees short of record levels.

On Thursday, the upper high pressure becomes oriented from the Bahamas to the Bay of Campeche, putting the local area in southwesterly upper flow. The low over Kansas this morning will race to New England by tomorrow afternoon, with the trailing frontal boundary approaching Interstate 20. We’ll have upper level cloud cover increase and lower as the day goes on, but no precipitation is expected through the daytime hours. It`ll be unseasonably warm again with readings getting into the 80s. As individual disturbance ride along a projected stalled frontal boundary overhead, there will be the potential for at least some light rain or rain showers, with the most favorable conditions for rain seemingly focused on the daytime hours Friday, then again late Saturday into Saturday night, and then again Sunday.