Friday, September 08, 2006

Tracking Florence This Weekend and Looking for Dreary Weather Next Week

We are looking for quiet weather this weekend in central North Carolina, but we'll be watching a couple of weather systems from the Weather on the Ones Forecast Center.

The first is in the tropics --
Tropical Storm Florence did not strengthen during the day Friday, but it remains a very large tropical storm. The 5pm advisory from the National Hurricane Center stated tropical storm force winds (40mph and greater) extended up to 375 miles from the storm's center.

It still appears that Florence will become a hurricane this weekend and the system is on track to take a more northerly turn. That turn will keep Florence away from the U.S. coastline, but the news isn't so good for Bermuda. Florence will pass over or near Bermuda with hurricane force winds late Sunday into Monday.

Closer to home, look for some "fine tuning" for our forecast for next week as a complex weather pattern may setup over the Mid-Atlantic and the Carolinas.

Above is a forecast weather map for Monday night/Tuesday morning from the GFS computer model. Notice the 'H' representing high pressure over the northeast. Winds flow clockwise around a high pressure and that will bring winds from the northeast into North Carolina. To our northeast, of course, we find the Atlantic Ocean and cooler, moist air. That cooler air will push into our state and likely "wedge" against the Appalachian Mountains.

This is a weather pattern meteorologists call "cold air damming", because the mountains act like a dam on a lake damming up the cooler air. Cold air damming, or the "wedge" is a tricky pattern to forecast for in North Carolina. In the winter time, this pattern sometimes puts us on the edge between a cold and damp winter day and a cold and icy winter day. Obviously, this is only September, and it won't be that cold next week. We may see cooler and dreary days next week though. Afternoon temperatures may hang in the 70s. Normal highs are in the low to mid 80s this time of year.

As I mentioned, this is a tricky weather pattern to forecast. We'll keep you up to date with Weather on the Ones updates this weekend on News 14 Carolina only on Time Warner Cable!

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