1/18 – The Chief’s “Warmer With Spotty Rain” Thursday Morning Forecast

At the surface, high pressure is centered near the Carolina coastline, producing light easterly to southerly surface flow across much of the Lower and Middle Mississippi River Valley. Warm advection aloft has stopped the temperature fall, with clouds developing over about the southwest half of the area.

The axis of a disturbance near Kansas will move across the area later today, producing a brief window for light precipitation during the late afternoon/early evening hours. Fortunately, temperatures will be plenty warm enough that precipitation type isn’t an issue. Forecast soundings support high temperatures approaching or exceeding 60 across most of the area, even with abundant cloud cover. Winds will shift to the northwest overnight tonight as the disturbance dives southeastward into the base of the longwave pattern. If that wasn’t enough, an impulse behind the Montana disturbance will also dive southeastward on Friday, returning arctic air to the area. Although we’ll see a good bit of sunshine on Friday, unlikely to see much more than a 5-10 degree recovery from sunrise readings, and 15-25 mph northerly winds will make it feel much colder.

Another arctic surface high will move into the Middle Mississippi River Valley Friday night and Saturday. That airmass won’t be quite as brutal as the one we are just escaping, but it`ll be plenty cold. The NWS will be issuing a Hard Freeze Watch for the northern half of the area for Friday night/Saturday morning, and a Freeze Watch for the southern half. It’s likely that similar products will be needed for Saturday night/Sunday morning in later forecasts.