A wet start to a breezy weekend

This - Friday - morning began with frosty temperatures bottoming out at 28 degrees from Clarksville to South Hill. Clear skies and light winds will give way to clouds and southeasterly gusts up to 20 mph as the next storm system bears down on the region. The low pressure center, over the Mississippi River valley as this is being written, will surge into the Mid-Atlantic states this afternoon.

By 4 p.m. temperatures will have topped out in the mid-50s as showers enter the area. Rain will continue into the early morning hours of Saturday, with a cold front passing through near midnight. The dynamics associated with this storm system led the Storm Prediction Center to issue a Marginal Risk for severe storms across the southern half of Virginia. The chief threat will be the potential for strong damaging straight line winds as that front pushes through, so keep those weather warning sources handy tonight.

Given the abundance of rain earlier this week the National Weather Service has also issued a Flood Watch for much of the Piedmont. Rivers and streams are still running fairly full, and the oncoming rainfall may create more flooding. The left hand panel of this graphic shows the rising level of Buggs Island Lake / Kerr Reservoir from that earlier rain, while the right panel provides the forecast rain amounts from this next system:

Following the storm's departure winds will kick up out of the west on Saturday, gusting over 30 mph at times. High temperatures will reach January averages in the low 50s under sunny skies. After a below-freezing start Sunday's temperatures look to climb back into the low 50s, accompanied by breezy southwesterly winds.

Next week will turn much colder as Arctic air heads across the Appalachians into Virginia. Whether that will result in wintry precipitation is still up for debate per the forecast models. Those solutions likely won't start agreeing with each other until after tonight's storm system moves away and things settle down a bit. The best advice would be to not buy into any snow forecasts until at least Sunday evening.