WEATHER
Since autumn officially arrived two weeks ago, central North Carolina has had exactly ONE day that actually felt like fall.
But a cold front moving through this morning is delivering some autumnal air that will stick around a few days! Temperatures today won’t change much — mostly cloudy skies will block the early-October sunshine, and northeasterly winds will reinforce the cooler air. We started in the 60s, and we’ll have to struggle to get back up to around 70° in the Triangle this afternoon.
It would be nice if today’s clouds would drop some much-needed rainfall, but that’s not likely to happen. The HRRR model’s radar simulation from 10:00am through 10:00pm shows just a few “radar freckles” — not much more than a passing sprinkle or two.
Mostly cloudy skies will stick around tonight, but even with that blanket of clouds overhead, we’ll still drop to the upper 50s and low 60s by early Wednesday.
Partial clearing Wednesday afternoon will allow temperatures to sneak up into the low 70s — still below-average for this time of year.
We’ll see more and more sunshine Thursday and Friday, resulting in a steady warm-up the rest of the week. Highs will return to the low 80s for one day on Saturday, before another dry cold front drops us back into the 70s Sunday and Monday.
The 8-14 day outlook from the Climate Prediction Center is hinting at a slight chance of above-average rainfall in the extended forecast — I’ll believe it when I see it.
TROPICAL UPDATE
No named systems in the Atlantic right now, but a few areas of disturbed weather that we’re keeping an eye on. The one with the best chance of becoming better-organized is WAY out there in the Atlantic — the National Hurricane Center estimates a 40% chance it develops into at least a tropical depression as it tracks slowly to the west.
Closer to the U.S. coast, there are two other areas we’re watching. One has a very low chance (10%) of getting organized as it moves from Florida into the southwest Atlantic. The other is a lot closer to the North Carolina coast, but it won’t directly impact our weather. The NHC shows a 30% chance of it becoming a tropical depression over the next 5 days as it tracks parallel to the coastline.
Even if it becomes a tropical depression, or even a tropical storm, the most-likely scenario is that it stays offshore. The European forecast model’s “spaghettios” plot shows the projected location and intensity through the weekend — each and every member of the ensemble keeps it away from us.
October is still a busy month in the tropics, so we’ll keep a close eye on things!
LINKS
- A puppy trapped by Hurricane Dorian was found alive a month later.
- Scientists are just starting to figure out the long-distance changes hurricanes inflict on coastlines and the deep ocean alike.
- September 2019 was the hottest September on record for the planet as a whole.
- Improved understanding of conditions in the stratosphere are helping researchers produce more-accurate short-term climate forecasts.
- Many scientists agree that the climate crisis is so severe at this point that geoengineering should at least be on the table. (I’m not one of those scientists.)
- What’s the difference between climate and weather? And how do they relate to each other?
- Read this before you start raking leaves this fall.
- Saturn, with 82 moons (20 newly discovered), now nudges out Jupiter as the planet with the most known moons in our cosmic neighborhood.
- Astronomers have for the first time detected water vapor around a small planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a distant star, and they’ve even found hints of rain in its liquid water clouds.
- Australia just had a pretty bad flu year, which might mean we will too.