Beautiful week & Long-range insights

Gee…what a beautiful week in the weather department. Plenty of sun with low humidity through Sunday. Highs in the mid to upper 70s this week and 80-82 this weekend. Next week becomes more like the swimming pool weather of early May with highs in the mid 80s and moderate humidity.

The bad news in all of this: Very little chance of rain and what does fall will be piddly. With a dry late winter and spring, you’ll have to water first your pots then everything in sight before too long. Read on for some interesting long-range insights.

The Foreca graphic looks good. There’s only a few things worth mentioning. The morning low temperatures show the most jump between Sunday morning and Monday showing an increase in humidity Sunday evening. There’s a low 10% chance of a sprinkle early Thursday morning near the Coast or Lake. The same can be said for a light shower Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, but mostly in inland sections. Most people will never see a drop.

The big reason for the slow warm up is that our winds will be mainly easterly through Friday. This Thursday morning forecast shows that the easterly winds will bring in air from a big Atlantic high pressure area off Maine rather than the traditional Bermuda high off Florida which turns our winds to the south.

Unlike many of these ramblings, here’s some real “take-aways” for planning. First, the rest of this month and probably early May will be dry. We may only get another tenth of an inch or two the rest of the month. This is a good time to make sure your sprinklers and hoses are in good shape. The reason: We are stuck in a no-man’s land between the NW flow to our north bringing down cold fronts to the Mid-Atlantic and the deep tropical moisture over Central America. Sub-tropical high pressure areas aloft will park themselves over us causing a slow warm up in temperatures and little rainfall.

Second, feel the urge for a get-away? The next month will be a great time for a weekend escape to NW Florida or the Alabama coast. Beach weather will start to set in there in another two weeks. Think I’m rushing it? Yes, because I think the pattern will shift and we’ll have a wet June and early summer along the Gulf Coast. I’ll explain why in my next post. Also….if you want to try something different, this would be a good year to visit the Caribbean in the summer. They should not see any significant hurricanes there through the bulk of the season. Again….I’ll explain why later.