WEATHER
We had a cold start this morning…
…but a big warm-up will start to kick in today! Abundant sunshine and a light southwesterly breeze will push temperatures up to the upper 50s this afternoon:
Clear skies tonight, with lows dropping back to the upper 30s…
…then we’ll hit the mid to upper 60s for highs on Friday:
A little cooler and cloudy on Saturday with light rain showers possible, mainly in the afternoon and evening…the RPM model’s radar simulation isn’t terribly impressed with the amount or duration of the rain, but you may want to re-think any outdoor plans that are especially sensitive to any dampness:
Clearing and warmer for the rest of the Presidents’ Day weekend. High temperatures Sunday through most of next week will top out at least in the 60s, even above 70°!
Just a slight chance of a shower or storm around the middle of next week — the long-range forecast model data is all over the place with that, so we’ll leave the percentages pretty low for now.
There aren’t any real signs of a prolonged cold snap to balance out this long warm spell. The Climate Prediction Center’s latest long-range outlooks came out today, and they call for a decent chance of above-average temperatures in March:
And the March-April-May spring outlook shows a significant chance of above average temperatures for those three months as a whole:
That doesn’t mean there won’t be a couple of brief cold snaps here and there, and it doesn’t mean our chances of snow are zero from here on out…but it means the overall trend of “unseasonably warm” weather looks like it will continue for a while.
LINKS
- You may have noticed a few buds showing up on trees, and it’s not just here in Middle Tennessee…spring has already sprung (20+ days early) across much of the southern U.S. based on leafing trees.
- There’s still MORE rain headed for California and the rest of the West Coast.
- Scientists have found a major change to the Earth’s oceans linked to a warming climate.
- But it’s not all bad news: Europe set a major renewable energy record in 2016.
- We showed the video on our morning newscast yesterday, but it’s definitely worth another look: a waterfall at Yosemite looks like it’s made of lava when the setting sun lines up perfectly.
- Can artificial intelligence predict earthquakes?
- To study whether the Earth’s north and south poles will reverse, geoscientists turned to ancient Mideast pottery.
- The United Arab Emirates wants to build a city on Mars, and it’s not as crazy as it sounds.
- Humanity has witnessed at least half a dozen stars explode in our neighborhood.
- Astronomers have been monitoring a star that “pulses” every time one of its planets makes a close pass in its orbit.
- British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is obviously famous for his prominent role in 20th-century history, but he was also passionate about science, writing on the possible existence of extraterrestrial life.
- Probably the nerdiest thing I’ll link to this week: Quantized inertia, dark matter, the EMDrive and how to do science wrong.
- This is pretty big news…scientists may have just made a malaria vaccine breakthrough.
- Ancient dentistry: people were treating cavities 14,000 years ago — and it wasn’t pretty.
