BLOG: Pleasant
The weather will be dry across the region for the next several days. This could stand alone as a headline, given the amount of rain we've had over the last 8-10 weeks. But what we're also going to be experiencing over the next 3-5 days is an honest-to-goodness warm-up! There is a high pressure system on the weather map which is centered over West Virginia. This will promote plenty of sunshine across the mid-Atlantic states today, while that very stubborn low pressure system which has been nagging the Eastern Region starts to pull away from the coast of New England. Fog isn't really going to be an issue early today. We touched upon this yesterday, and made the point that there was (and "is") enough wind at most reporting stations to keep any widespread fog from developing.
Conversely, areas that are directly beneath the high pressure center, primarily along the Ohio River and across West Virginia, that will have some fog for a while early today.
Temperature forecasts are the biggest challenge we'll be confronted with over the next few days. While most temperatures today will manage to reach the lower or middle-70s, there'll be a back-door front pressing down from the north and east later today and tonight. With very little moisture to work with, this boundary will hardly manage to produce any widespread cloud cover tonight or tomorrow morning.
But what a shift in our surface winds to the north and northeast will do by tomorrow morning is effectively cause our temperatures to roll back to levels between 66 and 70 tomorrow. We'll just call this our "speed bump" on the road to a delightfully warmer weather pattern, which will be resuming on Friday, and will "kick into a higher gear" this coming weekend.
There'll be a tendency for this ridge of high pressure to re-build into the Eastern Region Friday night and Saturday. And this will not only be a strengthening ridge of high pressure on the surface weather map, but in the upper levels of the atmosphere as well. Warming taking place aloft will push temperatures at the 850-millibar level up to between 16 and almost 18 degrees Celsius by Sunday morning, or between 60 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit at approximately 5,000 feet above sea level. If sufficient mixing can occur between the surface and 5,000 or 6,000 feet (and there is no "capping" temperature inversion), then there's no reason to believe it can't reach the upper-70s on most thermometers on Saturday afternoon, and no reason why it shouldn't reach 80 degrees on Sunday.
Even Monday (the observance of Columbus Day) is looking quite warm for this time of year. No important rain is expected for the balance of the forecast period.
Have a good day!
