Watching Showers, Wintry Mix Sunday-Monday

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Skies will start out clear this morning, but clouds will begin to increase today as the expected low pressure system approaches the region. To the north of the viewing area, in Virginia, freezing rain will arrive late in the afternoon and into the evening as warm air advection moves into the region. The Piedmont region will be in the warm sector tonight, but there will be a good amount of dry air as well. The atmosphere looks to be saturated above 5000ft, but there will be dry air at the bottom of the column of air. At the surface, dew points will be the the upper teens. This could keep much of the rain from reaching the ground, so we will go with drizzle in the forecast with rain not until Monday morning, ahead of the approaching cold front. A more steady and heavy rain will move west to east Monday morning and then taper off in early afternoon. A few showers are expected to linger around through the afternoon. Total rainfall amounts will be 0.25"-0.50". Higher impact weather will be just to the north and west where temperatures will be cool enough that there will be a trace to 0.10", which can make travel dangerous.

Once the aforementioned front moves through in the afternoon, a much colder northwesterly flow will usher in and temperatures are expected to drop to the mid 20s Monday night.

Tuesday through Thursday will be much colder with temperatures around 10-15 degrees below average. There will also be a good amount of sunshine with high pressure beginning to build in and there will be upper level zonal flow overhead. With clearer skies at night, low temperatures will be in the low 20s as well.

Models continue to show the possibility of some wintry precipitation Friday night into Saturday as an approaching upper level trough could bring in some moisture from the Gulf. Given that it is still far out, we will just mention the possibility for this to occur and given that there will still be much much colder air in place, precipitation could very well be in the form of snow or a wintry mix.

Stay Warm!

Steve Stewart