Thursday forecast for December 23, 2010

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Today: High of 50 and sunny, winds northeast at 5 to 10mph

Tonight: Low of 31 and mostly clear, northeast winds at 5 mph and becoming calm

~Jackson, MS


Currently
One more day until Christmas Eve! How exciting and how quickly that the day has approach. If you have not finished your Christmas shopping, you only have a short period until the BIG DAY. If you do decide to finish up today, clear skies will accompany throughout the afternoon. Currently, our temperatures are in the upper 30s and lower 40s around the Jackson region. We have sunny conditions with winds from the northeast at 13mph and gusting at times at 20mph.

What's Happening Atmospherically
Surface high pressure will continue to help us maintain our sunny and clear conditions outside for the rest of the day. This high pressure is currently centered over the northern plains and ridging south into east Texas. So, we may see a few passing clouds but we'll remain mostly sunny. Even though it appears very sunny and clear, temperatures are going to stay on the cool side compared to Tuesday and yesterday. Cold air aloft from the northwest will keep temperatures down today and in some areas of MS below normal.

For tomorrow, we are going to have a surface low that is going give us a bit of rain for Friday evening. Models are a little uncertain to exactly when this rain will occur. Models are depicting rain to start early Christmas morning. Even with that the GFS model displays most of the showers east of Interstate 55. We should get some rain out of this low pressure system if not early Christmas morning then sometime during the day as the HPC points out.

Christmas Day forecast
Cooler highs for Christmas day making it feel very seasonable for Christmas. A high of 48 with mostly cloudy conditions. There were early reports of snow being in MS but as of right now mostly just rain. Now if the low pressure trends to a much slower side, then maybe some rain mixed with snow in northern MS. I'll keep you posted. Stay tuned for a more complete forecast discussion tomorrow. Stay warm and God bless!