Locally, we are looking at some really nice weather today. It was a bit chilly again this morning, but we’ll have a very nice Fall afternoon. High pressure is locked-in over the eastern half of the country.

It is large and strong. So we’ll have a lot of sunshine here locally with a light southeast wind developing. High temps will rise to the upper 60s today with a few 70s south. It’s still very dry outside with dew points in the 40s. The air has a very fresh feel to it. However, the humidity will climb tomorrow into the weekend. It won’t be “muggy”, but you will notice a difference.

Tomorrow we’ll have partly cloudy skies with high temps in the 70s. By Friday we’ll start pulling in more of a marine layer off of the ocean. So we’ll have more clouds and possibly some isolated showers. At least high temps will still be in the 70s. We’ll have a mix of sun and clouds over the weekend. A couple of stray showers will be possible with a little better chance for a shower over the Outer Banks.

Meanwhile, Eta has weakened to a tropical storm this morning. It is moving slowly west over Nicaragua. Many of the thunderstorms are now away from the center.

The system will continue to weaken over the next 24 hours. It’s even possible that it could fall apart for a brief time. However, the upper level energy will likely spin back out over the warm water. This would help to regenerate Eta as it moves through the western Caribbean. The latest forecast has Eta becoming a tropical (or subtropical) storm and moving over Cuba. Then it has it moving towards the Florida Keys.

This part of the forecast is highly uncertain. It will first have to regenerate, and then also survive crossing Cuba. Having said that…The latest models are in pretty good agreement on this scenario. There are a few outliers. Most of them then have the system curving back to the west/southwest. This would be due to the strong high/ridge over the eastern U.S.

So stay tuned for updates on this forecast.

Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler