A quick analysis of the CONUS nexrad mosaic reveals most of the action along the Gulf coast and Texas. There is a broad area of low pressure with on shore flow resulting in several days on rain for that area. Elsewhere the upper level troughing in the West and Anomalous ridging in the East has allowed most of the East to see warmer than average temperatures and mostly dry conditions.
The main threat for the Southeast will be where and when Hurricane Florence landfalls. Florence is currently a category 4 hurricane with winds of 130 mph moving WNW towards North Carolina. Over the past 12 hours the numerical weather models have began to pick up on weakness in the steering flow that was initially expected to landfall the hurricane along the NC coast. Model and ensemble guidance now suggests a stalling-off-the-coast and drop south before land falling as a weaker storm into South Carolina or Even Georgia. The issue with guidance will hopefully improve over time as this pattern is extremely difficult to work out even for these advanced computer models.
For us in central Indiana temperatures will be in the low 70s today with partly sunny conditions and looking ahead towards the weekend we see a stretch of warm and sunny weather with highs in the low 80s and overnight lows near 60. The next precipitation chance could be this weekend with Florence remnants. That is dependent on where the storm tracks and for now there are no “significant” chances of rain sat/sun.
