Updated 845am CT – Friday / 18 April 2014
…. A Mix of Clouds and Sunshine for this Friday ….
…. A Passing Low Pressure Disturbance with Rain Chances over the Weekend ….
…. More Sunshine with Warmer Temperatures for Next Week ….
On this Friday morning…. a surface high pressure area /1021mb/ extends from northeast Texas into southeastern Kansas. As a result of this surface weather pattern, our local surface winds are northeasterly.
In the upper levels of the atmosphere… a strong upper air disturbance is off the southwestern Pacific coast of southern California. Another disturbance.. the one that moved overhead of our area yesterday.. is over the lower Mississippi valley. As a result of this upper air wind pattern, the upper level winds over south central Texas and the Austin metro area about 18,000 feet above the ground are northwesterly at 30 to 40 mph.
With the surface high pressure to our northeast, we’re seeing a more east northeasterly surface wind continue across the area. As the high pressure area moves eastward, though, we’ll see a return south southeasterly winds by late tonight into tomorrow.
As clouds break overhead today, we’ll see afternoon high temperatures warming back to seasonal averages.
By tomorrow into Sunday, the low pressure disturbance.. off the southern California coast.. will move over the central plains creating atmospheric lift across Texas as it moves west-to-east to our north. Although the rain chances aren’t that high locally, we will see widely scattered rain showers and thunderstorms for late tomorrow through tomorrow night into Sunday.
We’ll see a return to more sunshine.. with a partly cloudy sky and even warmer temperatures.. for the first half of next week.
Another cold front.. in the longer range guidance.. is forecast to move southeastward toward our area by next Friday.
Regarding my forecast, my local forecast confidence: My forecast confidence is very high today through tonight.. then falling back to medium for the weekend (reference the increase in clouds and any rain chances). My confidence rises back to high to very high for the first half of next week.
Have a good Friday…
Meteorologist Troy Kimmel
Contact me:
tkimmel@austin.utexas.edu
http://www.facebook.com/troykimmel