Mild through the weekend

Staying Summery

High pressure is building into the Finger Lakes and will stick around through the weekend, bringing a stretch of warm, pleasant weather while keeping Hurricane Florence at bay over the Southeast.

There is a subtle disturbance passing through the region today which could touch off a couple of isolated rain showers, particularly across the Southern Tier. The northern half of the Finger Lakes will have very little chance for rain today.

Temperatures will climb into the upper 70s to near 80 degrees. Skies should be a bit sunnier than in recent days, but there will still be fair weather clouds in the area.

Dewpoints this afternoon will reach the upper 60s to near 70 degrees, so it will start to feel muggy. The higher humidity will keep temperatures elevated overnight, with lows Friday morning in the mid and upper 60s.

Friday could also have a stray shower, but most areas will again stay dry. Saturday and even Sunday will follow suit, but the rain chances are low enough that they should not impact any outdoor weekend plans.

Temperatures will rise another couple of degrees, especially over the northern counties. Highs will reach just above 80 degrees there on Friday with low 80s more likely on Saturday. A few mid 80s could show up by Sunday. The Southern Tier, meanwhile, should stick in the upper 70s to near 80 degrees.

Winds will be very light throughout this entire time and will mostly be from the south.

I also want to mention some impressive statistics in our climate record for this weekend. In 1939, a major heat wave struck between September 14-16. Ithaca’s high temperatures for those three days were 87º, 98º, and 97º respectively. In all, September 1939 had 5 days at or above 90 degrees in Ithaca. These remain the latest 95º days in Ithaca’s climate history.

The only other year to have a 95º day after September 10th was 1931, when it reached 97 degrees on the 10th and 11th and 100 degrees on September 12th.

Florence Impacts in the Finger Lakes

There remains a high degree of uncertainty in the eventual track of Florence and its moisture. In essence, there are a couple of possibly scenarios, but no one yet knows how the pattern will unfold next week.

After meandering around the Southeastern United States for a few days with catastrophic flooding, the moisture from Florence should eventually be captured in the broader flow of the atmosphere and transported north.

Some models have this happen in a slow, gradual manner with mainly light rain and minimal impacts. Other models redevelop Florence into a potent non-tropical low pressure system with more flooding rains.

Again, it is impossible at this time to have any confidence on which scenario may come to pass, or even where the rain would end up in these different scenarios.

The time frame to watch here in the Finger Lakes would be late Tuesday through Wednesday next week. If moderate to significant impacts were to come here, that is when it would be. The chances of this happening should be considered very low at this time.

Stay tuned for continuing no-hype information on next week’s weather.