A Short Term Change in the Pattern in Store. More Rain Chances Possible.

After experiencing several days of warm weather with a chance of rain every now and then, we are now about to enter a period where we can push those rain chances much higher than usual.  Our pattern is going to shift into a west based -NAO with a suppress track of systems coming through the southern half of the U.S. in an El Nino-ish fashion.  This parade of systems will continuously bring in several rounds of rain for the upcoming weekend and into early next week, which will (for once) provide places such as the Carolinas better chances for rain and also increase our totals for the month/year.  With this change, there will also be cooler temperatures settling in so instead of highs from the upper 70s to low 80s, it will be more like mid 50s to lower 60s.  Had this been January or February, we would most likely be talking about winter storm events occurring instead of rain and thunderstorms.  This will not be a lock in our overall pattern (the way it stands now) and would only last for 5 or 6 days before we get back to warmer temperatures, though this does not eliminate a night in the future during early April where we could see a potential frost or freeze take place.  It has happened before so any gardening you plan on doing I would hold off until around Easter (usually when we stop having frost/freeze issues).  Last night's frontal precipitation produced a good bit of activity and heavy rain but did not yield as much in amounts for the precipitation was in, out, and gone instead of slowly moving through.  Anyone under the stronger storms were hit with fast-moving ones that produced gusts of near 50 mph and pea-sized hail but the majority of this had only lasted between 5-10 minutes before departing so that explains why places like my area in Gastonia only received .10", not to mention the downsloping combined with it.  The majority of the dynamics was associated with a low pressure to our northwest crossing the OV producing a wide area of snow for the northern tier of the U.S. and that is why places such as southern KY and TN saw the more severe outbreak than the Southeast did.

Take care folks.