Short Term Forecast - Catawba (North Carolina)

Current Conditions
Hickory

Temp: 61.3°F

Forecast Last Updated at Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 7:17AM

Welcome Rainfall Today; Drying Out Friday

Showers and a perhaps an embedded thundershower or two can be expected today into tonight, with most of the rain coming this afternoon onward. Any lingering rain on Friday should mostly be early, followed by some afternoon clearing. Weekend weather overall looks quite good. Temperatures will be near or slightly below normal over the next several days.

Thursday Hi: 75 Lo: 61 Plenty of clouds; Showers likely & perhaps a t-shower; Most rain coming this afternoon & tonight; SW wind around 10 mph

Friday Hi: 78 Lo: 52 Becoming partly cloudy; Scattered showers or t-showers possible through late afternoon; Mostly clear overnight; SW wind around 10 mph becoming NW

Saturday Hi: 78 Lo: 56 Lots of sunshine; Nice way to kick off the weekend!

Sunday Hi: 77 Lo: 53 Mix of clouds & sun; Stray shower or t-shower possible

Monday Hi: 75 Lo: 55 Scattered clouds; Temperatures just below normal

Further Out

Tuesday - Scattered clouds; Pleasant weather; High in the upper 70s; Low in the mid 50s
Wednesday - Partly cloudy; A chance for a shower or t-shower; High in the upper 70s; Low in the mid 50s

Forecast Discussion

Showers and thunderstorms associated with an approaching cold front will deposit some welcome rains on the persistent western North Carolina drought area today. The majority of the rain will come during the afternoon and into tonight. The front will sweep east of the area Friday, allowing for some sunshine to end the workweek.

Weekend weather looks quite good, albeit a bit on the cool side for the middle of May. The weather regime features a fast northwesterly wind flow aloft that will propel hard to time impulses our way. One front or surface trough will move through on Sunday, perhaps generating a couple of showers. Another such front is presently scheduled to generate more scattered showers and thundershowers along about the middle of next week.

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.

So now you know who's behind the forecast. It's not magic--just lots of hard work by many people. In addition to meteorology, keeping RWC going requires office mangement, programming, computer system's administration, ad sales, and graphic design. We'll introduce you to the rest of the team soon.