Tracking Florence and Looking for Cooler Weather in NC

A big weather story for the first of the week will be Hurricane Florence. As the National Hurricane Center has been forecasting for the last several days, this will not be a big story for the United States, but it will be for Bermuda.Florence should move across or very close to Bermuda late Sunday night through the first half of the day Monday. If you are interested in weather conditions in Bermuda during the storm, here are some websites with more information --

• Bermuda Radar Loop
• Current conditions at Bermuda International Airport
• Bermuda webcam
• National Hurricane Center

Elsewhere in the tropics, there is another area of "interest" just southeast of Florence.

The National Hurricane Center said Sunday evening the disturbance southeast of Florence could become a tropical depression late Sunday night or Monday. For the latest, be sure to catch our tropical updates at :21 after the hour on News 14 Carolina.

Outside of the tropics, we have an interesting weather pattern setting up for the new week.
That is a forecast map from the NAM computer model, just one of the computer models we use to forecast weather. This model typically does well forecasting the weather pattern we look to be in for the new week. Notice the high pressure building over the northeastern U.S. That high pressure will bring northeasterly winds (cooler air) into North Carolina.

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, this is something meteorologists call "cold air damming" because this cooler air wedges into the state damming up against the Appalachians. This pattern often brings dreary weather conditions. Cold air damming should begin to set up on Monday. In central North Carolina, we should see partly sunny skies by afternoon with highs in the upper 70s to near 80. Mostly cloudy skies can be expected for Tuesday with highs in the mid to upper 70s. Then look for light rain showers or drizzle on Wednesday with highs in the low to mid 70s.

Cold air damming, or "the wedge", is probably one of the most difficult weather features to forecast in North Carolina. We'll continue to monitor the latest weather data coming into our forecast center, and you can look for the latest weather updates in our Weather on the Ones Forecasts on News 14 Carolina.