DETROIT – Good Tuesday morning!
Morning satellite imagery shows an extensive deck of stratus clouds across southeast Michigan. While there have been some breaks of clear sky over the far southwest, most of us will start the day cloudy, with low-level moisture essentially trapped.
Today’s sunrise was at 7:04 a.m.
Dry air is heading our way and may generate some cloud breaks during the afternoon, but the more aggressive clearing will occur this evening and tonight.
Highs on our Tuesday will hover just below average in the mid-70s, with north winds moving at 4-8 mph.
Tonight’s sunset is at 7:59 p.m. Over the past weekend, we had our last post-8 p.m. sunset of the season.
Lows Tuesday night will be in the upper 50s with light wind becoming calm air.
Warm, mild end to the week
We’ll then hit a stretch of great late-summer weather over the next few days.
We’ll have mostly sunny skies Wednesday through Friday. Highs will be in the low 80s Wednesday, then rise into the low-to-mid-80s by Friday.
Timing uncertain on possible weekend rain
The upcoming weekend weather pattern is a bit murky. The computer models haven’t had great consistency with their weekend predictions over the past few days.
The general scenario is that a cold front approaching the western Great Lakes region will draw Gulf of Mexico moisture northward ahead of it, with that moisture heading into Michigan during the weekend.
One complicating factor is Hurricane Earl in the Atlantic. While Earl likely won’t have much impact (as long as it stays well east of Bermuda), I’ve noticed over my four-decade career here at Local 4 that strong hurricanes tend to slow down the weather pattern. And this morning’s computer models are perhaps finally getting a hint of this.
So, I’m going to hold off on any shower chances until either late Saturday or Saturday night. We may even have some sunshine during the first half of the day, so take advantage of this hopeful delay in that moisture arriving.
As long as we get that morning sunshine, highs should reach the low-to-mid-80s.
Showers then become more likely Saturday night and on Sunday, with highs Sunday cooling into the mid-70s.
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