Today's Weather Outlook
To end the workweek, cold fronts are back on the move as precipitous showers thrust from the Upper Midwest into the Northeast while thunderstorms plague the South.
The chain of rain today starts over the West Coast toward the central Rockies, where a strong low pressure region jolts gusty winds, scattered showers, and isolated thunderstorms along the coastline and into Wyoming and Montana by nighttime. Expect a wintry mix or even purely snow with increasing elevation in the Sierra Nevada range and the Rockies.
Over the southern Plains, upper-level atmospheric energy and a cold front will enable strong to severe thunderstorms to launch both into early today and beginning in the late afternoon. Although unlikely, be ready for hail and damaging winds amongst the strongest storm cells.
The same cold front will also be what shifts moderate to heavy rain from the southern Plains through the Great Lakes as the day progresses. A marginal chance for urban and lowland flooding is set alongside this corridor, but there is a potential for more intense rain underneath a separate area, under scattered thunderstorms in the South. Lighter showers will dampen the mood as far east as Maine.
Cooler temperatures begin a short-lived comeback as the cold front's curtains push over the center of the nation. Frigid highs just grasping 20s and 30s freeze over the north-central High Plains, the central Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada Range, while 40s and 50s win over both the rest of the Rockies as well as the rest of the central Plains into Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Warmer 60s emerge along the West Coast, in the northern Plains, and Appalachia.
The real heat for today dominates in the 70s and 80s for the Desert Southwest, the Intermountain West, the Pacific Northwest, the Mid-South, the Lower Midwest, the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic, and even southern New England. As for the hottest areas of the U.S. for today, seek out Florida or isolated areas in the southern High Plains, where highs stretch just above the 90s.
