3/19 – The Chief’s “Sunny, But Cool” Tuesday Morning Forecast

The upper level disturbance that brought the most recent cold front through the region is now east of the Appalachian Mountains and headed to the Atlantic Ocean. Surface high following this system is currently near the ArkLaTex and will continue south to the northern Gulf Coast this evening. This will lend to a cool but pretty spectacular day. Moving into the overnight period, surface high will be right along the AL and FL panhandles. This, along with strong radiational cooling from light winds and clear skies, would lead to cool temps. However, upper level high pressure will already be moving in from the west which should counter cooling enough to result in lows slightly warmer than they were this morning.

A cutoff upper low currently centered over Southern California will begin tracking east as deep trough now over the eastern US moves offshore. Model evolution of this feature suggests that the closed low will open up into more of a weakness as it tracks east across the southern tier of the country. Models are quite close in timing and placement of this system, with it tracking across the Lower Mississippi Valley on Friday. As showers and thunderstorms develop along the appendant cold front, we will have to monitor for severe weather. Model suggest a strong warm nose for the northern 2/3rd of the area will keep any storms from being surface based. The only area where there may be any real chance for severe storms appears to be west right along the LA coastline where surface temps could be warm enough to aide storms in being surface based.

Benign weather returns this weekend as the pattern clears, with near to above normal temps and no rain in the forecast for that period.