When you look at the U.S. Drought Monitor’s latest update you may like the fall colors on it, but it is actually not a good thing.
A huge portion of the U.S. is in at least the first 2 tiers of drought. If this dry pattern continues then it’s possible that the entire country could be in some type of drought over the next few weeks. We did have some rain recently. So there is only a small area that is technically in a drought.
We are about 0.85″ below average for the month of October.
We will pick up some rain over the weekend. More on that in a moment.
Temperatures were way below average on a few of the days in October. There were 3 days with highs in the 50s.
So when you average out the temps then we are about 5 degrees below average. I thought that that would put us in the top 10 coldest Octobers on record, but those are still dominated by dates in the 1900s. Plus, we’ll warm up a little next week.
So we have high pressure in the region today. This will bring us some nice weather for the next couple of days.
We’ll be mostly sunny today with high temps rising into the mid-upper 60s.
It should be beautiful outside. Dew points are in the 30s and 40s. So it is nice and dry. Winds will be variable at 5-10 mph.
On Saturday, we’ll be partly cloudy. There will be an offshore low forming to our southeast. There may be a stray shower near the Outer Banks, but the rest of the region should remain dry. There may be some isolated showers tomorrow night, but the bulk of the rain will start up on Sunday morning.
This initial rain may be a large band as the moisture pushes west of the offshore low. Then there will probably be some breaks, but more scattered showers will continue on and off into the afternoon.
The low should move to our northeast by Sunday night.
We could see about a quarter to a half an inch of rain, but some locations may see around an inch. That will depend on which model has a better handle on the low.
We’ll warm up a bit early next week with some drier weather for a while.
Meteorologist: Jeremy Wheeler
