Updated 845am CDT Friday / 30 August 2013
…. More of the Same ….
…. A Dry Summer Weather Pattern Through the Labor Day Weekend ….
On this Friday morning…. surface high pressure continues over the southeastern USA.. northeastern Gulf of Mexico as well as the western Atlantic Ocean. Another high pressure area is to our distant west over the four corners region. A low pressure area is over southeastern Colorado with a trough.. or line.. of low pressure extending southward into eastern New Mexico and far west Texas. As a result of this surface weather pattern, surface winds are south southeasterly over our area.
In the upper levels of the atmosphere… a strong upper level high pressure area has settled southward back into Texas and the southern plains states. In addition, interestingly enough, the upper level low.. that moved westward over our area last weekend.. has been rotating clockwise around the periphery of the upper level high, is located over western Missouri and eastern Kansas. Being just on the south side of the upper air high, winds over south central Texas and the Austin metro area about 18,000 feet above the ground are east northeasterly 10 to 20 mph.
Overall, there is little change in my forecast over the next few days.
Through the rest of the week and into the upcoming Labor Day weekend, I expect that the upper level high pressure area will continue to dominate our weather. I expect plenty of sunshine through the long Labor Day holiday weekend. In addition, given the on-going drought conditions, afternoon high temperatures will rise once again with near triple digit temperatures possible once again.
The upper high pressure area may settle more west of our area by Sunday and Monday; even so, limited atmospheric moisture and limited atmospheric instability will keep rain from our forecast. We need to watch, however, the earlier referenced weak area of upper level low pressure rotating around the upper high since it could come back into east Texas for a second visit by early next week. With it, I’m anticipating isolated to widely scattered rain showers and thunderstorms to our east by Monday into next week.
According to meteorologists at the NWS/National Hurricane Center, a system emerging off the west coast of Africa has some potential to become better developed over the far eastern Atlantic Ocean. There’s another area of thunderstorms about 700 miles east of the Lesser Antilles. Otherwise, there are no systems in the Atlantic Basin (Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea) that threaten development over the next five days.
Regarding my forecast, my local forecast confidence: Very high forecast confidence through Sunday… then high to very high confidence Monday (Labor Day) through the balance of the seven day forecast period.
Have a good Friday…
Meteorologist Troy Kimmel
Contact me:
tkimmel@austin.utexas.edu
http://www.facebook.com/troykimmel