Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Slim chances for rain return through the weekend

 Slowly but surely, this warm and dry pattern of the last couple weeks will finally begin to wrap up. Our first chance for some rain in the coming days is Thursday night into Friday morning along a cold front. This will bring a weakening line of showers and storms through the region after midnight Friday morning. Before they get here, there may be some gusty showers and storms to the Northwest during the daytime hours with peak heating. No severe weather is expected locally.

This cold front is the first of a couple systems that will signal a pattern change by next week. One of the things weather forecasters look at to predict the weather is wind patterns in the upper levels. This map shows wind speed and direction a few thousand kilometers up in the atmosphere. Those winds are what drive our overall weather pattern. A pair of small dips in the jet stream, or shortwave troughs, will bring our weather systems into the region. The first comes with the incoming cold front Thursday night into Friday, and the second arrives Sunday into Monday.

The second weather system will bring us potentially more widespread rain showers between the Sunday-Monday time frame, and a small threat for a few embedded thunderstorms within that window as well. This should bring us more in the way of widespread rain, but I'm not expecting long durations of heavy rain, so our rainfall deficit looks to continue building in the short term. One thing that early week weather will do is bring a cooler air mass into the area with afternoon highs back into the 70s by Monday and near the low 70s by Tuesday and Wednesday.

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