BLOG: Windy And Warm
Calling it windy rather than breezy Thursday afternoon as some gusts are exceeding 30 knots and we took the high up slightly.
Model trends over past 24 hours suggest that the rain is largely over by 6 or 7 Friday morning, so we did a slight re-wording with that to say "any rain ending early."
Everything else looks good. With a south to southwesterly wind gusting to between 20 and 30 mph, temperatures across most of the greater Baltimore area should soar Thursday. But because of the close proximity to chilly water near the Bay, there will also be some places in the afternoon that will fail to get out of the lower 60s.
The regional radar is showing a corridor of showers with a few embedded thunderstorms occurring in the Great Lakes region. In fact, in Chicago -- where the temperature has reached the upper 60s during each of the past two days-- some locally heavy rainfall has occurred within the past couple of hours, and a cold frontal passage occurred shortly after midnight.
This front is headed east, and should arrive in the viewing area late Thursday. We'll see some sunshine Thursday, which will tend to fade behind increasing clouds. And what really makes this warm surge so impressive is that even despite the "cloudier finish" to the day, it should still manage to reach the lower 70s.
Showers associated with the cold front should occur Thursday night, and some will even linger for a while early Friday morning. But the big story for Friday is going to be the change to much cooler air. While temperatures may not drop into the 40s until around daybreak Friday, most will only reach the mid or upper 50s in the afternoon -- even if the sun does manage to come out for a while with clearing expected Friday night, it will be brisk and much colder.
The weekend should offer a fair amount of sunshine, with Saturday being the chillier day of the two.
We've been discussing the concept over the past couple of days that a very slow-moving upper-level low pressure system, which will be creeping across Texas Friday and Saturday, may not bring any rain to the mid- Atlantic states or the Northeast until next Monday night or (even more likely) Tuesday, and we're sticking by that idea.
Temperatures should be mostly in the lower 60s early next week.
Have a good day!
