WEATHER BLOG: Beautiful Sunday

A weak ridge of high pressure will cross the area today and although daytime heating will cause some clouds to mix with sun, it will be quite comfortable. High pressure will remain ridged across the area tonight with fair skies and comfortable conditions.

High pressure will slide offshore on Monday as a cool front currently over the northern Plains crosses the Ohio Valley. An area of low pressure will develop along the front across the lower Great Lakes. These features will track eastward and cause increasing clouds after any morning sunshine and a shower or thunderstorm will be possible as well as we increase the humidity. It appears any significantly heavy rain should hold off until evening across much of the region, and perhaps after midnight well east of BWI across the DelMarva.

Low pressure will track to the northeast into western NY Monday night and Tuesday while the associated cool front slides into and across Pennsylvania. This combined with a surge of moisture from the south will cause clouds and numerous showers and thunderstorms. Some of the rain may be heavy enough for flooding later Monday night into Tuesday and there could be isolated pockets of damaging winds. Guidance is uniformly printing out 1-2" of rain, and this is certainly reasonable given the set up. Overall, Tuesday looks like a very wet day, with the  morning potentially being a washout. By afternoon, we may see some brightening as the heaviest rain pushes to our north and east.

The front will shift east Tuesday night and drier air will move in on Wednesday and Thursday with a return of some sun and comfortable temperatures. Trailing upper trough will slowly track across the area Wednesday and Thursday with a pocket of cool air aloft, so a brief shower cannot be ruled out with heating each day but we only think it is worth mentioning that for now. By the weekend, slightly ridging aloft may allow for warmer conditions to return with temperatures back to near 90.