Monday, September 26, 2011

     Scattered showers & isolated thunder will break out across our area ahead of a cold front crossing the mountains this evening & overnight. http://weather.unisys.com/radar/rad_us_loop.gif Behind the front, slightly cooler temps & lower dew points will allow more comfortable weather & mainly dry weather by Tuesday afternoon. But that pesky upper level low pressure over the southern Great Lakes will slowly progress eastwards to keep occasional rain showers in the forecast Tuesday night through at least midweek. That system will gradually get kicked outta here as we wave goodbye to September. Much cooler & drier air will arrive just in time for the first October weekend.

     Short term...a more or less southerly flow aloft brings lots of warm air into the region today. Plenty of sunshine and warm air mixing puts temps in the low 80s today without breakin a sweat! All that warm moist air ahead of a cold front crossing the Ohio Valley will trigger scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms, from west to east this afternoon & evening. A few storms may be capable of producing strong gusty winds, hail and repeated heavy downpours this evening. Occasional rain showers are expected tonight into Tuesday morning. Localized flash flooding problems are possible, especially for the mountains as up to 2.5 inches of new rainfall are possible given the chance for repeated heavy downpours. Behind the front, slightly cooler air & lower dew points will bring daytime highs Tuesday only a few degrees cooler than today.  

     That Great Lakes low pressure system over northern Illinois http://weather.unisys.com/nam/nam.php?plot=surf&inv=0&t=ini will gradually progress eastward into the Ohio Valley over the next few days. This will keep generally cloudy skies & an isolated shower in our forecast through at least Thursday. Our forecast will really dry out and cool air on the backside of that low pressure system will filter in by Friday. A dry, much cooler forecast is on tap for this weekend. Highs will only reach in the low 60s/upper 50s. Lows will fall into the low 40s to kickoff the first weekend in October!