Good Tuesday everyone and thanks for checking in on the Center for your weather needs. Conditions around here continue to run on the pleasant side of things as we await a cold front and thunderstorms Wednesday night. We take a look at our local forecast and go in depth on Hurricane Irene.

Our short term weather today will be a rerun of what we had on Monday. Skies will be partly to mostly sunny with temps in the upper 70s to low 80s in the east and upper 80s to near 90 in the west. Lows this morning will be way down there in the low and mid 50s for some. Overall… this is another great day.

A cold front will head our way by Wednesday night into Thursday. A few scattered storms may develop to our northwest on Wednesday and dive in well ahead of the front. Wednesday looks to be the hottest day of the week.

The front itself should be active with a line of showers and thunderstorms Wednesday night and early Thursday. This has a good chance at producing some strong or severe storms around here and that potential is already catching my eye. You can see this front on the European model by Thursday morning…

This will knock our temps down several degrees as we get in on a slightly cooler brand of air.

This trough pushing into the eastern half of the country may have an impact on Hurricane Irene. To what extent that impact is remains to be seen. Irene continues to strengthen as it heads toward the Bahamas and will be a major hurricane. Here is a look at the storm…

goes east infra red hurricane sector image

The latest forecast and information from the National Hurricane Center…

[Image of 5-day forecast and coastal areas under a warning or a watch]

At the moment… I like what the European is doing with the storm…

A track like that seems to make the most sense as of right now and would deliver a crushing blow to the Carolinas and flooding rains and possible wind damage all the way into New England. There is actually some support for this storm to hug the entire east coast with a possible 2nd landfall across the northeast.

That track would only throw some clouds our way, but may also carve out a bit of a trough leading to a system diving in from the northwest over the weekend. The combination of that high across southern Canada and the hurricane just to our east may set up a nice pressure gradient leading to a windy day or two.

I will have updates as needed and we will provide some cool Irene tracking links in the coming days. Have a great Tuesday and take care.