WEATHER
Chilly weather today, with high temperatures only reaching the low 40s, even as the clouds decrease and more sunshine emerges overhead:
Cold tonight, with low temperatures dropping to around 20°:
The warm-up starts to kick in after Saturday morning’s chilly start — we’ll warm up to near 50° by Saturday afternoon:
A slight chance of rain showers Saturday night will be out of the way by early Sunday morning. Your odds of picking up even a trace of rain are only about 1 in 3, and Futurecast is unimpressed with even those odds…just a blip on the radar simulation:
The warming trend will continue into early next week, with highs in the upper 50s Sunday and well into the 60s Monday and Tuesday. A good chance of showers again on Monday, then we could see some strong storms on Tuesday:
Colder air will move in again Wednesday and Thursday, but once again the cold snap will be short-lived — temperatures will already start warming up on Friday.
It’s too soon to get into details about Tuesday’s thunderstorm threat…the long-range forecast models (specifically, the American GFS model and the European model) are at odds regarding the timing and strength of the overall storm system. The “analog” forecast method (comparing the GFS model’s output to similar historical scenarios) paints a pretty decent chance of severe thunderstorms in our neck of the woods:
I’m skeptical about that at this point, since it’s based on analysis of the less-accurate model, and it’s still over 100 hours in the future. We’ll keep an eye on it over the weekend, and we’ll update you as things come into better focus.
LINKS
A short-but-sweet batch of nerdery to finish off the work week…
- Lisa mentioned this in yesterday evening’s post, but here’s some more info…for the first time since March 2011, there is no “exceptional drought” anywhere in the United States!
- NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sent back some more ridiculously awesome pictures of Saturn’s rings.
- Could “wormholes” really work as a method of faster-than-light space travel? (Probably not…)
- Here’s your intellectually challenging reading material for the day: Heisenberg’s astrophysics prediction finally confirmed after 80 years.
- We haven’t found proof of dark matter yet. But some scientists think we could be getting closer.
- “To sleep, perchance to dream” is the famous quote from Hamlet…but it’s possible one of the reasons we sleep is to forget.
- Speaking of sleep…if you want to reset your sleep schedule, go camping.
