FRIDAY WEATHER: There’s a 50% chance of thunderstorms today. Otherwise, it’ll be mostly sunny and hot. Temperatures will top out near 90 degrees and the heat index will be in the mid 90s even here on the northern plateau. It’ll be even hotter in the lower elevations — such as Knoxville, where both Scott and Oneida are playing tonight. As for the rain chances, it looks like coverage will be spotty at best. Precipitable water values in the atmosphere are quite high, so any thunderstorm that forms could dump some heavy rain. But most folks may not see rain at all today.
THE REST OF THE WEEKEND: There’s a 90% chance of rain tomorrow. The coverage will again be scattered, but the latest guidance (as of this writing) shows pretty widespread coverage beginning tomorrow morning, so there’s still hope that we’ll see enough rain to settle the dust. Sunday will be dry. Temperatures both days will be in the mid 80s.
NEXT WEEK: We’ll be back to near 90 degrees by Tuesday of next week, as our hot, dry September continues. We’ll see some chances for rain later in the week. Hopefully — HOPEFULLY! — we’ll see a powerful storm system up north next weekend that’ll drag a cold front behind it and end this incessant heat. We aren’t looking at an early taste of fall, necessarily, but temperatures around 80 degrees are certainly better than temperatures in the 90s! We’ll see how it evolves. As of now, it looks like this might happen around Sept. 20, which is a couple of days later than originally anticipated. It’s certainly not written in stone that it’ll happen. But there’s a chance. Further out, above-average temperatures will likely continue to be the general rule for the end of September and the first of October.
RIVER CONDITIONS: Very low streamflows continue, with the Big South Fork flowing just under 50 cubic feet per second (cfs) and Clear Fork flowing only about 5 CFS. Water clarity is excellent. Water temperatures were a bit cooler yesterday thanks to lower nighttime temperatures, but still topped out at 84 degrees, so the summer swimming season continues.
TROPICAL WATCH: No tropical storms are expected in the Atlantic for at least the next seven days. The American GFS model continues to show a strong hurricane forming in a couple of weeks that could pose a threat to the Gulf. However, it is an outlier at this point and isn’t likely to actually happen. Conditions are very unfavorable to tropical storm formation in the Caribbean region, due largely to the developing El Nino.
