WEATHER
We haven’t had much in the way of “normal” weather so far this winter, but that’s exactly what’s in store for much of this week. We’ll see partly cloudy skies overhead today, with high temperatures reaching the low to mid 50s:
Down to the mid 30s around midnight tonight, then we’ll warm up before sunrise as clouds move in from the west. Mostly cloudy skies will keep us in the upper 40s for highs on Tuesday. Spotty showers are possible along and north of I-40 during the day:
The best chance of rain arrives Tuesday night, along and south of I-40:
The showers should be out of here already early Wednesday morning, before enough cold air can catch up to produce any wintry shenanigans. A big warm-up starts to kick in Thursday and Friday:
The warmth continues to build this weekend — at this point, it looks like we’ll be close to 70 degrees by Sunday and Monday!
Just a slight shower chance on Saturday, then a chance of showers and storms heads our way early next week. We’ll keep you updated on the timing and strength of that system throughout the upcoming week.
Beyond the scope of our extended forecast, it looks like the warmer-than-average pattern will stick around for a while — the Climate Prediction Center’s 8-14 day outlook shows a 70% chance of abnormally warm temperatures:
The 3-4 week outlook shows a better than 50-50 chance of the warmth continuing into early March as well:
Long-range outlooks can be fickle, but it just shows that the general trend of unseasonable warmth is going to be pretty stubborn.
LINKS
- NOAA’s newest weather satellite, GOES-16, captured some mesmerizing views of the tornadic supercells in Louisiana on February 7th.
- GOES-16 also sent data to Earth showing fluxes of charged particles associated with auroras (the Northern Lights).
- Last week’s news was that La Nina is officially over — why does the ocean temperature in the Pacific Ocean have so much of an effect on worldwide weather?
- During an eclipse, the sun’s faint outer atmosphere is revealed. NASA is taking advantage of this summer’s eclipse to study it.
- NASA has an unusually bold plan to find life (or at least signs of it) on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
- Modern searches for intelligent alien life accomplish more in a single day than they used to in a whole year.
- Why science will never know everything about our universe.
- Where physics and philosophy collide: quantum loopholes and the problem of free will.
- The creatures you can find in one drop of ocean water.
- What you can expect from Bill Nye’s new series on Netflix. (Hint: it’s not a “Bill Nye the Science Guy” re-boot.)
- Lessons on living well from a 105-year-old bicyclist.
