Movin' on up!

After a record breaking cold day yesterday, with highs staying in the 40's, it's going to feel much better today and into the weekend. At 8:00am this morning it was already 47° in Rockford, which was the high temperature here yesterday. By this afternoon temperatures will have warmed into the upper 60's and low 70's under mainly clear skies. A weak trough or dip in the jet stream up above generated the cloud cover we saw this morning, but now that is moving out to the east and out of the area. Behind that subsidence, or sinking air, is taking place and that this what is allowing skies to become more and more clear this afternoon. With plenty of sun today temperatures will be a good 15-20 degrees warmer than yesterday afternoon! A weak cool front will move through in the evening  and that could provide enough lift to produce a few light and widely scattered showers in the early evening. If we see any showers fire up they won't stick around too long, winds will shift around to the north east later tonight and that could allow for a few more clouds to build in tomorrow afternoon. But, it will still be very pleasant with highs in the low 70's.