Weather! Stormy afternoon, unsettled pattern ahead

Tomorrow’s verse, just like the first, except a little bit louder and a little bit worse. Your weather forecast mileage may vary.

July 6, 2011; 6:11 PM • by Weather Dan

Sure, Virginia’s got its fair share of weather threats, but aside from the occasional hurricane and tornado, we’ve got it pretty easy.

I’m especially glad that we don’t have to deal with sandstorms. This footage was taken via helicopter yesterday evening as a sandstorm, or haboob, swept over the city.

If you haven’t had enough, here’s a timelapse video of someone driving into it as well.

The current radar shows most of the storms have cleared out of the Richmond area. There are a couple thunderstorms still developing across the Blue Ridge, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about them making an impact this evening. Aside from a stray shower moving across the area, the remainder of Wednesday should be dry, possibly jumping back into the mid 70s before dipping below 70 overnight tonight.

A stalled frontal boundary across the VA/NC border is responsible for today’s storminess, and will stick around for the next few days. That means we get a repeat of today on Thursday. Highs will approach 90 if we can make it into the afternoon without any storms or extreme cloudiness. We’ll have another good chance of showers and storms, especially into tomorrow afternoon and evening. Lows will drop into the lower 70s again tomorrow night. Tomorrow night’s Flying Squirrels doubleheader (vs. Trenton, first game 5:05) will face some of the same threats that rained out tonight’s game. If everything goes according to plan, expect game-time temps near 90, dropping into the mid 70s by fireworks time.

Unfortunately, this is the pattern that’s set up for the next few days, so we don’t necessarily have a lot to look forward to. On the flip side, it’s not either over 100 degrees or snowing, so we’ve got that on our side. High pressure will move back in by early next week and finally give us a break from the storms for a few days. I’ll have a forecast for the weekend – with, hopefully, some projection of when we can expect this change – on Friday.

July 6, 2011 6:11 PM 0