6 PM – 40º, temperatures falling into the 30s
Overnight tonight, winds will turn out of the south helping to bring in abundant moisture and an increase in cloud cover. Rain will quickly develop through Saturday morning and early afternoon, starting around 10 AM, and spreading over our area by late afternoon. If you have New Year’s Eve plans and are going to be outside at all for any period of time, bring the rain gear.
We don’t rebound quite as nicely temperature-wise on Friday, staying in the mid to upper 40s for highs. Watch below as colder air filters in over the next 24 hours:
Wind direction begins to switch on Friday night to a southerly direction, foreshadowing changes for Saturday.
That would be a pretty interesting story. Right now, our weather does look to get fairly interesting, especially heading into the new year.
Starting Saturday, southerly flow in cooperation with a shortwave (small wave/disturbance in the upper levels of the atmosphere) will kick off some shower activity.
Saturday looks to be a pretty soggy day, as does Sunday, with a couple small breaks of dry weather in between. If you have any outdoor plans this weekend, you’re going to want to move them inside or take the rain gear along.
What About Temperatures?
A gradual warming trend will ensue, particularly Sunday and Monday, where temperatures soar into the 50s and 60s respectively.
The Cold Front
Late Monday night is currently the expected timing for a main batch of showers and some thunderstorms to rumble through the area. A few of these could be strong with one or two isolated severe storms. This is something the Storm Prediction Center is currently keeping an eye on:
For late Day-4/Sunday into Day-5/Monday, a more prominent wave could interact with more appreciable moisture/buoyancy from parts of east Texas toward the lower MS and TN Valley region (and perhaps areas farther north). This could support some severe potential. However, the relatively small wavelength and amplitude of this disturbance, and limited predictability inherent to such a mesoscale-sized system, limit confidence in the timing/location/magnitude of the severe risk.
Sunny skies have quickly become cloudy skies as clouds continue to move into the area.
Satellite imagery shows clouds spreading our direction from the west.
Showers and thunderstorms have also already developed to our west and can be seen on the current radar above. These showers/thunderstorms will continue to move towards us through the remainder of the afternoon.
Back in 1982 on this day, Nashville warmed up to a record 75°. Will we see that today? Not quite, as we’re more on the order of 20° cooler than that record.
The NAM (North American Model) above handles tomorrow’s rain event fairly well. Late Wednesday evening, a piece of atmospheric energy will approach us from the west, setting off a few showers and storms. Activity continues through the overnight hours into Thursday’s AM rush hour, but by then is already pushing east.
If you’ve been outside today, then you have felt the warm, muggy air that is present and setting up just ahead of tonight’s cold front that is expected to pass through overnight.
Winds have stayed around the 15 mph and we’ve seen a few strong gusts here and there. We expect this to continue until the cold front moves through.
OK, so before today, the record high temp for Christmas was 73° set in 1889.
We hit 76° at 1:59 PM, the warmest temperature ever recorded on Christmas Day in Nashville (dating back 127 years).
So does that make today the “warmest Christmas Day ever recorded?”
It is lifting north and east of us with the warm front.
The record high temp for Christmas is 73° set in 1889, the year Coca-Cola was incorporated
This morning, a warm front has arrived from the south. South winds and breaks in the clouds should heat us up to 73°.
A rain maker is already moving through the Missouri valley and will eventually reach us by early Saturday morning.
The HRRR model has a good handle on this through the evening:
Tree tops will glisten and children can still listen for sleigh bells in the rain. I’ll be dreaming of another white Christmas for next year.
