Slightly Drier Tuesday and Beyond
Good morning folks! We'll wrap up the weekend today with another active afternoon of scattered showers and thunderstorms and this setup will carry over into Monday, however drier air should infiltrate a bit Tuesday. As the week progresses we'll watch the upper level trough currently overhead shift east and the upper level ridge off to our west, flatten and slide east to sit atop the Southeast, allowing drier air to slide into the area. Although this dry air will temper shower and thunderstorm development, we don't expect another cool-down like we experienced at the end of July; sorry fall weather lovers. Overall, the week ahead looks fairly typical for August with pop up showers each afternoon, although coverage will wane a bit past Tuesday and temps will continue to reach the low - mid 80's across the lower elevations.
Temps Monday may end up being the coolest day of the week, although not by much, perhaps a few degrees, due to an increase in cloud cover as scattered showers and thunderstorms develop past midday. Much like this past weekend, coverage will not be pinned down to one particular area, but instead all of SW NC is in play, with a slight edge to the higher ridgelines due to differential heating. Temps push into the upper 60's - low 80's Monday and settle into the mid 50's - low 60's Monday night as partly cloudy skies sit overhead.
Tuesday through Thursday will bring temps into the mid 80's for the lower elevations, which is right in line for this time of year, while the ridgelines flirt with the low 70's. There will be more sun than clouds each afternoon and isolated thunderstorms are a solid bet, with a slight uptick in coverage on Wednesday, but nothing more than scattered coverage. Overnight lows hold to the mid 50's along the ridgelines to the low 60's throughout the valleys, all under partly cloudy skies and morning fog closer to sunrise (mainly for the valleys).
Friday into next weekend could be all sunshine with temps in the mid 80's, but we are too far out to nail down any specifics. Our next discussion will come out Tuesday afternoon and we'll take a deeper look into the latter part of the week as well as next weekend.