Standard Summer Forecast – Saturday Evening Forecast Update 9:40 PM

We had a decent supply of scattered showers and storms across the area today, as expected for a mid-July day. Not everywhere saw rain, but where it did rain, there were some locally heavy downpours. The weather forecast will be predominated by general troughiness across the eastern third of the country, and this will mean slightly higher than normal rain chances and slightly below average temperatures.

A strong ridge of high pressure aloft remains anchored over the Intermountain West, while the aforementioned trough should remain stationary across the eastern third of the country over the next several days. This means we will be in a northwesterly flow aloft, which sometimes can wreak havoc on the forecast down this way. With lots of moisture at the surface and daytime heating, scattered showers and storms will begin forming by Noon across the area each day and last through the mid-evening hours. But, because we have a northwest flow aloft, we always have to watch any storms upstream of us that may wander into our forecast area during the overnight hours as well.

The trough is forecast to lose a little bit of its amplitude toward the week’s end. This will mean a return to the seasonal averages of rain chances and temperatures: 30% of rain each day with highs in the low 90s. But, longer range guidance for the end of the weekend and into next week show the trough re-amplifying and this would suggest an overall increase in the number of scattered storms each day, so stay tuned!

Isaac Williams
WVUA-TV Weather
Twitter: @WVUA_Isaac