The warmup commences, but the clouds and rain stick around for a while

As mentioned in Friday's blogpost temperatures in the midst of a cold air damming (CAD) event - like the current one across the Piedmont - can be tricky to forecast. Saturday's highs in the upper 50s to near 60º around Mecklenburg County were a good ten degrees lower than anticipated. Today - Sunday - that CAD setup looks to finally start breaking down.

The high pressure center over New England which was reinforcing the cool northerly wind flow is moving off the coast this morning. That will swing this morning's winds around out of the south later today, allowing temperatures to climb back toward late May averages. This afternoon's high temperature will top out in the mid-70s despite persistent cloud cover, although sunshine may peek through a few times before sunset at 8:22 p.m. in Clarksville.

Despite unfortunate timing which has marred Memorial Day weekend plans, the rainfall has been very beneficial. The left panel below shows recent rain gauge totals while the right panel is a forecast of additional precipitation through this coming Friday morning:

Daylight hours today will be mostly dry, but more showers and perhaps a rumble of thunder will arrive after dark. 

Sunshine will continue to be scarce through midweek as another cold front approaches and stalls out across Virginia. The next day with "partly sunny" in the forecast is Thursday. However, temperatures look to be more reasonable for this time of year with afternoon highs again climbing above the 80º mark.