WEATHER BLOG: Friday Of July 4th Weekend

A ridge of high pressure will temporarily bring drier weather and a fairly nice day across the Northeast.

The wind should be fairly light and northeasterly.

Therefore, most temperatures will be in the low or mid 80s this afternoon, except for 70s along the immediate coast. This bubble of high pressure should be enough to bring the sun out in earnest for several hours today across New York and most of New England.

But, the farther south and west you travel, the more likely clouds will become a bigger player this afternoon. This area would include most of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and the southern Tier of counties in Pennsylvania.

There have been some obvious 'changes to our thinking' regarding the weather for the Fourth of July holiday.

While a more pessimistic approach was always being implemented in the mid-Atlantic region, there was a widely held belief that the Northeast would be 'more immune' when it comes to dealing with showers and thunderstorms.

Unfortunately, we've seen more of a northward trend, or shift of where these models are distributing Saturday's rain within the past 24 hours.

So, it looks now like more rain will be getting distributed over New York State, northeastern Pennsylvania and in New England.

The best we can hope for now is, as the next wave of low pressure pulls out of the Ohio Valley tonight and slides to the east tomorrow, the window of opportunity for getting rain in most areas located east of the Appalachians will occur between 8 and 10 a.m., and it will last until 6 or 8 p.m. -- and for what its worth, there actually may not be very much thunderstorm activity associated with this rain, since there shouldn't be much instability available, or in other words -- clouds will be widespread from the very start of the day. Of course, fireworks displays are on almost everybody's minds, and the one area that still may be dealing with some rain after 8 p.m. should include parts of Long Island and also much of southeastern New England. However, for those places which are located well inland, the weather should start to improve just in time for fireworks displays tomorrow evening.

Cloud cover and some rain in the forecast tomorrow will be having an impact on daytime temperatures, which will be no higher than the 70s in all but a few random locations south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but it may be very difficult for the sun to come out at all in cities like Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Therefore, high temperatures in the low 80s would be a 'safer bet' in central and southern Virginia.

A few 'parting thoughts' about the Independence Day forecast -- How much rain will actually fall?? With the G.F.S. being the 'most bullish' on rain amounts across the northern Tier of counties in Pennsylvania and in southeastern New York, there could be more than half an inch in these areas.

The European is showing lesser amounts (some under a quarter of an inch in the Northeast, but it also suggests there can be close to an inch of rain by day's end in cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore.

As the low pressure system heads out to sea tomorrow night, this should pave the way for sunnier and warmer weather for the remainder of the holiday weekend on Sunday.

Some of the recent guidance suggests we might be 'too warm' in our maximum temperature forecasts for Sunday, but we're really just talking about two or three degrees.