WEATHER
Rain showers moved in from the south early this morning, and we’ll be dodging off-and-on showers throughout the day. The most-widespread and heaviest rain will fall through early afternoon, then the showers will be more hit-or-miss later in the day.
The HRRR model’s radar simulation from 8:00am today through 8:00am Thursday shows that pattern, along with more overnight off-and-on showers.
The clouds and rain will keep temperatures from moving too much throughout the day. We’ll be stuck in the 60s from the Triangle northward, with a better chance of hitting the 70s farther south.
Thursday will bring us more off-and-on showers throughout the day, but it will be windy and substantially warmer.
Late in the day is when things get complicated — we’re tracking the potential for strong to severe thunderstorms in central North Carolina for Halloween evening. Right now, it looks like the greatest severe weather threat will move in from the west around 9:00pm, and track west-to-east across the area through early overnight. (This is the simulation from our RPM model.)
Other forecast models are showing a very similar scenario. If that timing holds, the trick-or-treat crowds will just have to dodge some spotty off-and-on showers — inconvenient, but not dangerous.
But IF the storms speed up just a little, the severe weather threat will be higher, and it will arrive earlier — potentially as early as 6:00pm. The Storm Prediction Center’s “Slight Risk” outlook for severe weather is focused more to our west, but that region would shift along with the storms if they speed up or slow down.
Damaging straight-line winds will be the primary threat, and there will be enough wind energy in the atmosphere to support an isolated tornado risk as well. Large hail is unlikely, and while there will be some heavy downpours, they won’t last long enough to cause flooding.
To emphasize: the most-likely scenario is that the storms don’t move in until late evening, which means the greatest severe threat will remain to our west. (The storms will weaken more and more later in the evening, as they move eastward.) Keep checking the forecast, though — we’ll be evaluating new data continuously over the next 36 hours. And as you head out with the kids for trick-or-treating Thursday evening, make sure you have a source of weather information in case warnings are issued.
Thursday night’s rain will be gone by sunrise Friday morning — and the cool air will settle in for the end of the work week and the weekend.
After a chilly (frosty?) start Monday morning, a little warm-up will return us to near-normal temperatures by Tuesday and Wednesday. Another slight chance of showers will bring the next wave of cool air into our neck of the woods by Thursday and Friday.
LINKS
- While we face a Halloween severe weather threat, other parts of the country are looking at the possibility of snow on their jack-o-lanterns.
- Climate change could make winds like the Santa Ana that are driving California’s fires less frequent, and cause them to shift. But that’s not necessarily good news.
- 150 million people around the world now live on land that will be below the high tide line by mid-century, according to new research based on more accurate calculations of land elevation.
- Wind energy research has to expand, to enable wind energy to supply one-third to one-half (or even more) of the world’s electricity needs.
- More and more government agencies and private companies are planning trips around the solar system.
- Astronomers are getting closer to identifying where the dividing line lies between neutron stars and black holes.
- A closer look at the research that landed two astronomers the 2019 Nobel Prize in physics.
- Over the next five years, a new telescope called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument will repeatedly survey a spectrum of 35 million galaxies and 2.4 million quasars, spread across a third of the sky.
- When life gives you pineapples — and hundreds of millions of tons of pineapple waste — what do you do? A team of engineers came up with something “cool.”
- Cats have joined the ranks of dolphins, dogs and other animals that react to (at least some) human speech.
- Halloween nerdiness: Why we love blood-curdling screams.
- Daylight saving time ends this weekend…but several states want to make DST permanent.