RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR) – Have you noticed the cloud-cover moving westward into Virginia this Thursday morning? It’s not completely overcast, as peeks of blue sky appear through the cloud deck. The cloud-cover originates from an area of low pressure spinning east of us offshore in the Atlantic (flow around a low pressure system in the Northern Hemisphere is counterclockwise). Here’s the visible satellite image at 9 a.m. EDT.
And here’s the view from our Dominion Skytracker Camera in Downtown Richmond at about the same time this satellite image was captured:
Side note: while we are looking at the James River, it’s worth mentioning that the river level in Richmond is now above five feet (as a result of local heavy rainfall earlier this week before the early Wednesday morning cold front), the level at which you are required by law to wear a life jacket if you get in or on the James. Here’s the hydrograph at the time this snapshot from the Dominion Camera was taken:
CLICK HERE for the latest James River level and forecast.
Back to the low pressure spinning east of us…there is the chance we may squeeze some sprinkles from those clouds today as a result of that marine moisture. But there is something else battling the coastal moisture – the huge area of high pressure to our north reinforcing a drier, cooler air-mass in Virginia. Here’s what the surface pressure analysis looks like:
The high pressure center is in Canada north of New York, and you can just see the center of our low off of the Outer Banks in the bottom right of the map.
This low will move farther southeast away from us over the next day, and the broader high pressure will park over New England and eastern Canada through the weekend. This will mean continued northeast flow into Virginia, keeping our temperatures about five degrees cooler-than-average for mid-June. Rain chances also remain slim to none through the weekend because of that drier air and no upper-level disturbances arriving in the Mid-Atlantic.
Meteorologist Carrie Rose
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