Today we’ll see cloud cover on the increase through the afternoon with rain and storms cropping up. Today the favored areas for much appreciated rain are west and southwest of Nashville. A southwest wind picks up this afternoon bringing up the humidity. Tonight we’ll have a muggy overnight low in the mid-70’s; the only reason we won’t have thick fog tomorrow morning is because of a steady south wind through the night. Tomorrow all the pieces seem to come together; it looks like a near wash-out tomorrow with a 70% chance of rain. Both today and tomorrow we good see some isolated areas get around 2″ of rain; there is lots of mositure in the lower two miles of the atmosphere to allow for heavy rain from thunderstorm activity. Highs today will be a few degrees cooler than yesterday because of the cloud cover.

A warm and humid afternoon shaping up across Middle Tennessee (not exactly a shocker in late July). The southwest breeze Jeff mentioned this morning is steadily pumping in more moisture, courtesy of that tropical disturbance down in Louisiana and Texas. The southwest corner of the mid-state is already seeing some scattered thundershowers. No lightning strikes at the moment…and no severe weather expected this afternoon. Lisa will update things with Storm Tracker on News 2 this afternoon beginning at 4:00 pm. In the meantime check out the “NWS Radar Loop” at the top of the blog for the latest on those t’showers.

You’ll notice a southwest wind by afternoon; this wind is bringing in higher humidity and increasing the storm chances. Only a slight risk today, about 20% chance. The effect really starts to show up tomorrow when we jump to a 50% chance of storms; our best chance for significant rain since last Friday. The additional cloud cover tomorrow and Friday will hold the highs in the 80’s for Thursday and Friday. The wild card is what will happen to the tropical system down in the Gulf. If it develops into a tropical depression or low (develops circulation) it will actually increase our rain chances Friday and Saturday. Right now the chances for development are low but the Hurricane Center is keeping an eye on it. It’ll bring much needed rain to the Texas southern coast all the way up to New Orleans. They probably would rather have dry weather in the recovering city but the area has been very dry since winter. Here are the forecasted highs today, I struggled with putting today’s high around 93 or 94 (I don’t think we’ll see much in cloud cover till late in the day and the 850mb and 500mb temperatures are just a little higher along with a SW wind instead of a little bit of a NW wind yesterday afternoon).

We are going to start getting a little bit of a west wind today; it’ll turn southwest tonight and stay southwest for most of the rest of the week. With this wind shift comes higher humidity and and better rain chances. Today its only about a 10% chance of rain but by Thursday it’ll be around 40% chance. A little warmer today and tomorrow (low 90’s) but by end of the week the additional cloud cover will keep the highs in the upper 80’s.

Highs next couple of days will be slightly above normal next couple of days but at least no heat waves in store for us this week. In fact, we are hoping daytime highs slip down a little by the time we get to the end of the work week. If we can tap into a southern flow we’ll have to suffer higher dewpoints (higher humidity) but rain chances start to show up by Wednesday and last into the weekend. The rain chances along with the cloud cover should keep highs in the upper 80’s through the period. Below are the forecasted highs for today.