WEATHER
At this time last year, we were already tracking our first major winter storm of the season…what would end up being our only major winter storm of 2018-2019. It’s a whole different story for early December this time around, with mostly calm weather for the next several days.
We’ll see plenty of sunshine most of today, with just a gradual increase in high cloud cover this afternoon. Despite the sun, high temperatures will still end up about 5 or 6 degrees below-average.
Mostly cloudy skies tonight will try to keep some warmth near the ground…but a quick clearing trend before sunrise will allow temperatures to tumble back to the mid 30s to start the day Wednesday.
Southwesterly winds and abundant sunshine will combine to push high temperatures to the mid to upper 50s on Wednesday, almost exactly normal for early December.
It’s more of the same Thursday and Friday — chilly in the mornings, cool in the afternoons. We’ll add a slight chance of showers to the mix on Friday, but we’re not looking at much more than a trace of rainfall.
After a chilly-but-dry weekend, our rain chances increase significantly next week. The European forecast model’s simulation from 7:00pm Sunday through 7:00pm Wednesday shows waves of rain moving in from the west…it also shows any wintry shenanigans avoiding central North Carolina.
At least it will be warmer rain this time around! Temperatures Monday and Tuesday will reach the low to mid 60s, before we cool off again for Wednesday and Thursday.
LINKS
- The Atlantic hurricane season is over, but the Pacific is still active: Super Typhoon Kammuri just made landfall in the Philippines with 130 mph winds.
- A look back at Florence: how a photojournalist prepares to cover a hurricane.
- Has El Nino become more intense in the Industrial Age?
- Life on our planet found a way through “Snowball Earth”, so you’ll probably survive this winter too.
- Cracks in Greenland’s ice sheet are producing the world’s largest waterfalls, plunging more than 3,200 feet deep. Scientists worry they’re speeding up the transport of ice into the sea, and raising sea levels.
- The European Space Agency has secured a massive boost to its budget.
- The search for evidence of life on Mars could be helped by fresh insights into ancient rocks on here on Earth.
- For the first time, researchers have identified two nearby stars that seem to be flinging comets out of orbit and into our solar system.
- Astronomers are hoping the James Webb Space Telescope can answer one of the most pressing questions in exoplanet science: can a small, rocky exoplanet orbiting close to a red dwarf star hold onto an atmosphere?
- A black hole about 14,000 light years away is a LOT bigger than we thought one like this could get. How did that happen?
- In temperatures millions of times colder than interstellar space, researchers have performed the coldest reaction in the known universe.
- The remains of an 18,000-year-old puppy were found frozen the permafrost in Russia. Scientists hope the discovery can help them explain the connection between dogs and wolves.