ROANOKE, Va. – The bright spot of today’s forecast is this afternoon. Skies are partly cloudy with a light breeze, and temperatures are as warm or warmer than Thursday. There is a change on the way: showers start tonight and keep going all the way into Sunday afternoon.
These showers are isolated and light. Skies are gray all weekend and the drizzly rain makes it hard to spend time outside, but you can still get around town if you need to.
The same system that causes our showers brings storms to the center of the country. Texas and Oklahoma have a good chance of severe weather: heat from the Gulf of Mexico meets cold from the northwest which is a solid recipe for storms.
The cold front causing those storms uses up a lot of the available energy today before it influences our weather. By the time it reaches us it only causes clouds and showers. We don’t even cool down that much since the cold front moves north instead of directly over us.
The first effects of the front come this evening. Clouds build up after 9:00 PM with overcast skies by midnight. Showers start soon after midnight and keep going here and there through both Saturday and Sunday.
Rain totals stay below an inch with the most rain falling in the Highlands. Over the course of the weekend both the Highlands and NRV stack up more than a half-inch of rain. Once the work week starts the rain wraps up. We stay dry until the later half of the week.
The rain holds off this evening so High School football goes off without any issues. There is a little bit of a breeze just after sunset, but most of the night winds stay calm.
College football games have a little tougher weather. Skies are cloudy around noon Saturday with more showers in the afternoon. It isn’t wet enough to cancel the games but be sure to bring a rain jacket.
Since the cold front moves away from us we hold on to our above-average temperatures this weekend. Highs actually jump up a few degrees Sunday. Our warmest day ahead is Monday, and comfortable temperatures last into the end of the week.