A damp start to the week

UPDATE 9:45 am:  Forgot to put in another plug for Tuesday’s statewide Tornado Drill to be held exactly 24 hours from now (9:45).   Severe weather season is approaching!

The early morning fog looks like it has mostly dissipated, a product of the overnight temperatures cooling down to the dew point under light winds.  An approaching cold front will then trigger showers across the Fredericksburg area tonight into the early afternoon hours tomorrow.  The total amount of moisture available for this system is relatively low as this map from the newly named Weather Prediction Center (formerly the Hydrometeorological Center) shows:

The dark green shading over most of Virginia represents at least a quarter-inch of moisture while the dark blue shows a half-inch minimum, so our total rainfall by Tuesday afternoon will likely be between those two values.

After high temperatures today and Tuesday reach the low 60s, a cold shot of Canadian air will invade via another long wave trough that enters the region behind the cold front.  This trough won’t be as long-lasting or as intense as the previous one that locked us into a late-winter cold snap for almost ten days, but we will see temperatures a few degrees below normal Wednesday and Thursday before a brief warmup on Friday.  Unfortunately it looks like next weekend will be much cooler than this past one with temperatures perhaps fifteen degrees cooler than the spring-like conditions we enjoyed the past couple of days.  Oh well, it IS still March…

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