Summer officially arrives at 11:24 PM tonight with the Summer Solstice. This is when the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere, where we live, is at it’s greatest tilt toward the Sun. The Sun is at it’s highest in the sky and the day is at it’s longest.
On this last day of Spring the afternoon high reached 89 degrees, near the average for this time of year, however the humidity remained low with dew points in the 50s. Not bad for a late June day.
Change is on the way…with a return to humidity and rain as Tropical Storm Cindy heads toward Middle Tennessee. The tropical system strengthened to Tropical Storm status earlier today.
Cindy will likely make landfall early Thursday morning along the coast with near 50 mph winds. It is not expected to reach hurricane strength before it comes on shore.
Ahead of the system more clouds will move into the mid state tomorrow. The humidity will slowly start to rise and no doubt it will be hot, with a high near 90°. The rain will likely arrive in Middle Tennessee by Thursday morning to the southern most counties.
The core of Cindy will move through West Tennessee and across the Tennessee River by Friday. On and off rain will linger into Saturday. Over the 3 day period we could pick up 2″ to 4″ of rain.
The ground is not saturated, so we shouldn’t have any widespread flooding problems. But there could be some isolated flooding issues. And with all that water draining into creeks and rivers, we could see some minor flooding in areas.
Winds should not be a problem, outside of some strong gusts with thunderstorms.
The picture for the weekend does seem to be improving, some models are showing that things will dry up by late Saturday into Sunday. Since all models are not agreeing with this forecast, we are keeping a chance of rain in the forecast.
I’ll have an update on Channel 4 News at 10pm.
Lisa Spencer
