Rainy & Foggy Tuesday, Cooler Mid Week, Late Week & Weekend Warm Up!

Many of us picked up a decent 1/4″-1/2″ of rain today helping to melt a lot of the snow and ice pack across West Tennessee. The warmer weather and rain today created the perfect storm for both steam and advection fog to develop in the area today. Steam fog can happen when warm rain falls onto a snowpack, the moisture evaporates, saturating the cold air near the ground causing it to condense into fog. Advection fog occurs when warm, moist air moves over a snow-covered surface. The cold snow cools the air above it to its dew point, causing condensation. This leads to rapid melting which can increase the moisture in the air and fuel more fog. The rain has moved out and temperatures will drop tonight as the front comes in clearing out the fog. We will be cool for a couple days but several shots at 60° are in the forecast and we will tell you all about it coming up here.

We had the right conditions in place for the (steam and advection) fog today but it should clear out later this evening. This type of fog happens when warm air moves in behind a warm front, but the ground is still covered in cold snow. You typically need calm or light winds to prevent the mixing of drier air, allowing the fog to accumulate. The most important thing you need is a temperature differential between the warm air/rain and the cold snow surface.

Temperatures made it up into the 40s for most of West Tennessee on our Tuesday and rain showers developed in the middle of the day. The rain, with the combination of the warmer temperatures today, did a 1-2 punch on melting the ice and snow across the region. We still have some work to do and most of what is left will melt on Friday and anything remaining will be gone by Sunday and highs will be up near 60° from Friday through the middle of next week.

Most of us picked up between 1/4″-1/2″ of rain on Tuesday, but the next shot for precipitation probably isn’t coming until we get closer to Valentine’s Day. The fog will break up later tonight as a cold front is going to pass through. Clouds though, will stick around all night long. The winds will kick up a tad and be a bit breezy out of the northwest as the front digs in. We will drop down to around 30° tonight and there could be some freezing on some roads so look out for black ice again on Wednesday morning.

The sun will return by the middle of the day on Wednesday but temperatures will only warm up to the upper 30s. Some of us could hit 40° but most of us will fall short. It will be breezy at times on Wednesday as well with a blustery northerly wind making it feel quite cold at times. Wednesday night will be our last night for a while dropping below 30° as we should dip down near 20° with the clear skies by Thursday morning. There will be some icy spots on the roads early Thursday, but with mostly sunny skies and a high in the low 40s, more snow and ice will melt during the day. Thursday night lows will fall down to around 30°.

Friday is going to be the warmest day we have had in a couple weekends. Highs will reach the mid to upper 50s and some of us could even hit 60°. Most of the ice and snow left across the area will melt on Friday. We will see a sunny day as well with a light breeze out of the west or southwest. With the clear skies, we will again fall down to the low 30s to kick off our weekend.

It appears a weak and dry front will clip us sometime on Saturday but it will not be bringing any precipitation or a major cool down with it. Expect a 5-10° drop from Friday but the front will stall out during the day, and be lifted back to the north as a warm front on Sunday. Sunday highs will make it up to around 60° and low to mid 60s are on the way as we kick off next week. This warm up and pattern change will put us back into more of a severe storm concern than a winter type storm concern. Expect a mostly sunny weekend with some clouds on Saturday as the front moves through. The winds will vary in direction on Saturday but be back to the southwest on Sunday.