2/6 – The Chief’s “Sunny & MUCH Warmer” Tuesday Morning Forecast

High pressure will continue to build into the region from the west as the low pressure that gave us rain/hail on Sunday continues to move east over the western Atlantic. The high pressure building in has allowed the pressure gradient to relax allowing for winds and cloudiness to decrease across the region.

The forecast through the short term period appears to be a temperature focused forecast. Today, with an increase in insolation across the region, I think most of the forecast area will warm into the 60s, and in some cases nearly 10 degrees warmer than yesterday. Another relatively cool night expected tonight with many locations dropping into the lower 40s with light and variable winds and clear skies continuing…allowing for efficient radiational cooling. By Wednesday, the aforementioned high pressure continues downstream over the eastern tier of the United States. This will allow surface winds to become more onshore.

Going into mid to late week, eyes begin to shift upstream as a large scale disturbance begins to situate across the continental divide. This will eventually place our area in a more active southwesterly flow. A surface front will develop along with a lee-side low pressure Thursday and move northeast quickly as a break from the main disturbance and continues northeast toward the western Great Lakes. This will allow the front to push south and eastward generally toward our region by late Thursday and into the day on Friday.

The front eventually makes it to the mid-south region southwest toward the mouth of the Sabine River as it stalls within the mean upper level flow. Saturday night and Sunday a stronger upper level impulse develops across northern Mexico and moves northeastward. Ahead of this feature, a weak surface low tries to develop along the stalled frontal boundary. With this feature, more widespread rainfall is anticipated.