Happy Saturday morning! We’ve enjoyed a nice long dry stretch of sunshine for a while, but that will soon be coming to an end. A few systems in our vicinity will be bringing us more clouds and rain chances in the coming days.
Saturday is looking pleasant. We’re starting off cold with our first frost of the season for our inland communities. Hopefully your sensitive vegetation was covered up or brought inside before last night. This is on track for average first frost in our inland communities.
Another frost isn’t expected anytime this week. Clouds will gradually increase throughout today and tonight. Highs reach the low 60s. Overnight lows fall into the mid 40s.
Sunday will be a mostly cloudy day, but still dry and cool. Highs again reach into the low 60s.
You’ll want to have your rain gear on hand for the workweek, or at least close by. Monday through Friday, in this unsettled stretch, expect a lot of cloud cover, mist and drizzle, and some scattered light rain showers at times. By the week’s end, we’ll likely have seen 1-3″ of rain total.
This is much needed rain as drought conditions are extending into our Virginia communities now and the severe drought has expanded across more of northeastern North Carolina.
We can also expect gusty winds each day. Sustained winds are looking to be 15-25 MPH. High temperatures stay in the low 60s and overnight lows fall into the upper 40s and low 50s all week. As of right now, it appears we’ll dry out just in time for Trick-or-Treating Halloween night.
In the Caribbean Sea, Tropical Storm Melissa is still gaining steam. It’s expected to rapidly intensify into a major Category 4 hurricane sometime this weekend. Early next week, it’s forecast to make landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Jamaica. That will unfortunately likely lead to devastation there. Then Melissa is expected to track through a portion of Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane and then track through the Bahamas. The long-range models have Melissa tracking closer to Bermuda or east as it travels through the Atlantic, so we aren’t concerned with any direct impacts. A week from now, we may see a rougher surf from Melissa, but that’s about it for us locally.
Enjoy this dry weekend!
– Meteorologist Kristy Steward