Forecast Last Updated at Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 6:52PM

Pleasant Late-Week Weather Ahead

A cold front moving through the area will usher in slightly cooler and drier air through Friday, before better shower chances move back in for the weekend.

The 2009 Ray's Weather Calendar Photo Contest is underway. It will run through July 31 with winners to be chosen by the middle of August. "Hit me with your best shot!" See our photo contest page for details and "fire away".

Wednesday Hi: 75 Lo: 54 Partly cloudy overnight; Patchy fog developing; North wind 5-10 mph

Thursday Hi: 73 Lo: 53 Scattered clouds, more so in the morning; Light northerly breeze

Friday Hi: 73 Lo: 58 Scattered clouds; Cannot rule out an isolated PM t-shower; South winds 5-10 mph

Saturday Hi: 75 Lo: 61 Partly cloudy; A better chance for afternoon showers and t-showers

Sunday Hi: 76 Lo: 61 Partly cloudy; A continued risk for PM thunder

Further Out

Monday - Partly sunny; Continuing to watch for scattered afternoon thunder; High in the lower 70s; Low near 60 degrees
Tuesday - Partly cloudy; Scattered shower and storm chances holding on; High near 70 degrees; Low in the upper 50s

Forecast Discussion

A cold front will push south of the region tonight with just the slightest chance for a leftover shower this evening. High pressure will be building in from the north behind this front. Slightly cooler and less humid air will provide us with what appears to be a a pretty nice Thursday.

A very isolated threat for showers and t-showers is introduced back into the forecast by Friday with better chances arriving for the weekend as our next front enters the pictures for a Sunday/Monday time frame. It appears to stall out over the region early next week, therefore, we have a thunderstorm chance in the forecast from Saturday through the end of the forecast period, which takes us through Tuesday of next week.

Hurricane Dolly is now inland after roaring onshore at South Padre Island just northeast of Brownsville, TX early Wednesday afternoon. Dolly will steadily weaken but bring very heavy, flooding rains to south Texas the next couple days. A large tropical wave in the far eastern Atlantic will continue moving west but development of this system is not expected over the next couple days. We'll keep our eye on it as the next name on the list is Edouard.

Announcements

RaysWeather.Com continues to grow. We are an "information age" company using the web to broadcast the message but also as a tool for producing the message. RaysWeather.Com (what we call RWC) has evolved from "Ray's hobby in Beautiful Downtown Rutherwood" in 1999 to the most widely read media outlet in NW NC reaching 150,000 to 200,000 people per month and covering the weather from NC/VA line to Asheville and Wolf Laurel. We will continue to grow geographically as well--Burnsville has just been added; Waynesville, you're next. The heart of the growth is good data, "local flavor", and THE most reliable forecast.

We recently added our 6th forecaster to the best forecast team ever assembled for this region. It's time for us to introduce "the crew"...

• Dr. Ray Russell is a Computer Science professor at Appalachian State University. His PhD is in Computer Science from Georgia Tech (1989); weather has been a long-time passion. He started posting a "snow forecast" on the university website back in the mid 1990's; this evolved into RaysWeather.Com in 2000. Ray lives in Boone and has taught at Appalachian State since 1991.
• Eric Anderson (RWC's Chief Meteorologist) received his degree in meteorology from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and is a 15-year veteran of NOAA with experience in forecasting, observation and analysis. A native of western North Carolina, Eric's former tenure in the National Weather Service gave him the opportunity to forecast for areas of the Mid-Atlantic region. His professional interests include upslope flow snow events in the southern Appalachians, as well as cold air damming in the Carolinas.
• Alan Simons, born in Fayetteville NC, has a Bachelor of Science in meteorology and almost 20 years of professional experience that includes forecasting for newspapers, websites, radio, aviation, and the military. He first became interested in weather in North Carolina, and RWC takes him back home after a variety of duty stations, from New York to Hawaii. Alan's been with the RWC team since 2003.
• Tim Kirby joined Ray's Weather Center in October 2004 and lives in his hometown of Fries, VA (pronounced Freeze). The folks from this small Grayson County town say "it's freeze in winter and fries in summer". He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from NC State University. While at NC State, he was president of the NCSU Student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society. Before joining RWC, Tim worked for the National Weather Service for ten years in Raleigh, Chattanooga and Morristown, Tennessee. Tim has always loved the challenge of forecasting and owes his dedication to a childhood fascination of snow (no school!).
• Harold Alston is a N.C. native with Bachelor of Science degrees from both App State (Broadcast Communications) and UNC-Asheville (Meteorology). He has 30 years experience tracking and forecasting NC weather including 15 years experience for media outlets. Nailing down Appalachian wedges & wintry possibilities are his areas of expertise with a lifetime of N.C. weather experiences to reference.
• Jeff Cox, a native of Asheville, is the latest addition to the RWC team. He earned a Bachelor of Sciences in Atmospheric Sciences from UNC-Asheville. At UNC-A, he was the lead forecaster for the school's Weather Forecast Line, campus Radio Station, "The Blue Echo" and the campus newspaper, "The Blue Banner." Jeff has experience as a meteorologist in both television and radio. He spent over 2 years in Macon, GA, as the chief meteorologist at WGXA FOX-24. He also has experience as a radio broadcast meteorologist for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, Georgia.