Cool Tonight, Fall Begins Tomorrow...
LINGERING RAIN THIS AFTERNOON…
The coverage on the rain was not very high as expected, but some areas did pick up a little bit of rain. There were a couple of good downpours with some lightning in parts of Collin and Dallas County earlier today. Now we are left with just a little light rain and drizzle moving thru the metroplex as of 230pm. This won't really add up to much if you are watching your rain gauge. Maybe a .10" of inch if you're lucky.
The clouds and drizzle will linger thru about 6pm and maybe longer in some locations to our south and east. You can check out the radar right here.
But later tonight skies will clear and we will have a nice cool night. In fact, temperatures will drop into the 50s tonight.
I am forecasting a low of 57 degrees at DFW. But many of the surrounding areas will fall into the mid 50s tonight. This will be the coolest night since May 17th. GREAT FACT ALEART: Tonight will only be the 2nd time in the past 128 days that temperatures have dropped into the 50s at DFW. So if you're up early in the morning you might need a jacket.
JACKET NOT NEEDED FOR LONG…
With lots of sunshine and a light east wind temperatures will be very pleasant tomorrow with highs in the mid 80s! Come out and join us for the "Get Healthy Texas 5K Race in Keller" (more info here). Karen, Doug and myself will be broadcasting live Friday for our 5 and 6 pm newscasts. Come out and see us in downtown Keller right in front of city hall.
WARM WEEKEND…
We will be right back into the 90s for the weekend with highs in the low 90s on Saturday and Sunday. We will see overnight lows in the 60s this weekend and thru most of next week. Highs next week will also be on the warm side. I am forecasting highs around 90 to 94 degrees each day next week. The average high for this time of year is in the mid-80s. So just like the summer, fall will be starting with above average temperatures.
SPEAKING OF FALL… FALL ARRIVES EARLY FRIDAY MORNING…
The Autumnal Equinox is at 4:05am CDT Friday morning. This is the start of Fall in the northern Hemisphere and the start of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The reason we have seasons here on Earth is because the Earth is tilted. That tilt means that as the Earth orbits around the sun, part of the year the sun's direct rays are in the northern hemisphere and the other part of the year the sun's direct rays are in the southern hemisphere. This creates a non-uniform heating pattern on the Earth. The reason we have weather is because the Earth tries to balance out that unequal heating. So the weather tries to move heat from the Equator north toward the Poles and vice versa with the cold from the Poles forced toward the Equator. This battle of the cold air and warm air is what generates our weather patterns. We can be assured weather will never disappear because the Earth will never reach that balance, that equilibrium level of temperatures… all because the Earth is tilted.
Anyways, the Equinox gets its name because it means equal day and equal night. There is roughly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness on each spot on Earth at this time. As the sun continues to get lower in the horizon here in the northern hemisphere our nighttime hours will increase and daylight hours will continue to shrink. So now on this date we have about 12 hours of daylight. GREAT FACT ALEART: The Winter Solstice (on Dec. 21st this year), winter officially begins in the northern hemisphere, there will only be 9 hours, 59 minutes and 27 seconds of daylight on that day and on Dec. 22.
Larry Mowry
CBS 11 Chief Meteorologist
