A few storms, then a taste of late spring, before summer arrives late next week

We’ve had a pretty busy spring severe weather season, particularly in May. But we appear to be moving out of the heart of severe season and towards the “heat and humidity” season many of us dread. But before we get too far into early summer, we’ll get one more chance to enjoy late spring in the coming days. By mid- to late-week though, it appears our failure to officially reach 90 degrees yet in 2024 will be just a memory as a heat dome builds east into the Mid-South.

For this weekend, we have a cold front moving south into the metro as a trough of low pressure builds to our north, providing a chance of rain and a few thunderstorms through Sunday, then another shot of drier air and some cooler temperatures to start next week. Let’s start with this weekend.

The cold front mentioned brought a lot of rain to areas to our north this morning, but the remnants of that former “MCS” (mesoscale convective system) means dwindling showers for us as of mid-day. Cloud cover is keeping temperatures comfortable as humidity starts to creep up after a couple of very pleasant days late this past week. High humidity returns overnight – dewpoints back to near 70 after dropping into the 40s for a while Friday afternoon. Another convective system is likely to pass by just to our north tonight, though a few showers or a thunderstorm might make it into the northern metro early Sunday morning. As the front itself moves through Sunday, a few more storms are possible locally in the afternoon and evening. We’ll see high temps in the 80s today and tomorrow, while muggy lows overnight remain in the 70s.

Behind the front, most of next week looks dry with abundant sunshine – well-deserved after we averaged every-other-day rainfall for most of May and early June! The first half of the week will feature low humidity levels once again, with highs only in the low to mid 80s and comfortable morning lows in the 60s.

However, as we head into the latter half of next week, temperatures climb as southerly low-level wind flow combines with building high pressure overhead. We should have no trouble reaching 90 degrees officially by Thursday or Friday, with heat continuing into next weekend. Some models are predicting mid-90s for the weekend with heat indices near 100! So enjoy the early half of the week while you can, because summer looks to be making its presence known in about a week!