Weather

While it’s a few degrees short of the record late this Monday afternoon, it’s still one of the hottest days of the year so far. In fact, Gatlinburg hit 100 degrees at 4:15 today. Thankfully, there will be cooler temperatures later this week! Here’s the outlook in today’s Tri-Cities Weather Blog forecast!

• Tonight-A small chance of an evening shower or thunderstorm, otherwise mostly clear. Low 67.
• Tuesday-Mostly sunny, maybe a late afternoon shower or thunderstorm. High 94.
  • Tuesday night-Mostly clear, a small chance of a shower or thunderstorm. Low 68.
• Wednesday-Partly cloudy with scattered showers and storms developing. High 92.
• Thursday-Showers and thunderstorms are likely. High 83.
• Friday-Partly cloudy with off-and-on showers and thunderstorms. High 83.

The heat wave we’re currently involved in has been the hottest in 12 years or so, and these things happen about every ten years or so. With it being the middle of summer, it’s to be expected, but 8-10 degrees above normal is quite a bit when you’re starting with an average in the upper 80s to begin with.

All of that said, we’ll get the potential of two more 90+ degree days before changes start coming! Tomorrow looks to be hot and dry, with your normal pop-up shower and storm chances, like we’ve seen today along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, as well as Southwest Virginia. Not everyone will get rain, just like today, as most of northeast Tennessee has stayed dry today.

A cold front that’s in the Northern Plains today rushes southeast tomorrow, and should be close enough Wednesday to start to throw some rain and thunderstorms in the forecast. These will be more numerous than your typical storms this time of year, though. We’ve got a good chance of rain to help the developing drought we’ve got going on.

That front moves through Thursday morning, but stalls out south of us after that. The resulting stationary front will bring us chances of rain and storms at least through Friday, and perhaps into the weekend as well.

While Wednesday’s temperatures still get over 90 degrees, the same isn’t likely for Thursday and Friday. We’ll have a good chance of clouds and rain keeping temperatures below average for the first time in a while. The rain will be helpful from that standpoint also. At this point, it looks like good chances of rain and cooler temperatures could be something we have on Thursday into early next week.

Thanks for checking here for the forecast today!