Cold weather to be followed by rain in time for the weekend

A cold weather pattern that featured average daily temperatures more than 10 degrees below normal for the past 6 days will continue into Friday, fortunately warming up just enough that our next chance of precipitation will be of the liquid variety!  A reinforcing shot of cool air is moving in tonight in the wake of a weak cold front today. That will send our low temperatures into the teens for parts of the area Thursday morning with a low near 20 in the city.

Widespread sub-freezing Thursday morning low temperatures from the GFS computer model

Another cool day is expected tomorrow with highs only topping out near 40 despite a sunny day. Thursday night lows will be a bit milder as southerly wind comes back and keeps us in the upper half of the 20s. The next rain event will arrive Friday afternoon as scattered showers, though temperatures will be warm enough for plain rain to fall in the metro.  (Cooler temperatures to our north could result in some light frozen precipitation for northeast AR and northwest TN.)

Scattered showers will move into the metro by 6pm Friday according to the European computer model

Rain is likely Friday night - in fact most of the precipitation we get with this system will occur between 6pm Friday and 6am Saturday. However, chance of light rain will linger into Saturday morning.  Lows Saturday morning will stay above freezing with no frozen precipitation expected locally.  By Saturday afternoon, most rain will be gone, but there could be a little drizzle under the cloud cover.

Showers departing by 6am Saturday, again from the European model

Sunshine returns to start next week. After a cold day Sunday, highs should rebound to "acceptable" levels (and which we won't haven't seen in a couple of weeks by then) in the 50s next week.  For complete forecast details, click here for desktop/tablet users or here for mobile phone users, or keep the forecast in your pocket with our mobile apps!

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