Moderate May Mugginess

Now

Sunny, warm, moderately humid. Increasing humidity produced some low clouds over the Washington area this morning, but winds more southerly than easterly have helped skies clear this afternoon as temperatures have reached at least into the upper 70s. By 4pm, many locations, including Dulles, were 80-82°. Dewpoints in the summery low 60s are reflected in relative humidity ranging over 60%. Radar is clear over the entire Mid Atlantic region.

Pleasantly warm conditions are likely to continue for the next couple of days.

Surface weather/satellite image map at 2pm today from HPC/NCEP/NWS shows subtropical storm Andrea, the first of the season, lurking off the Southeast coast.

Tonight and Tomorrow

Partly cloudy, warm. Skies will be partly to mostly cloudy tonight with lows in the low 60s in the city to the upper 50s in the cooler 'burbs. Some clouds in the morning tomorrow will give way to mostly sunny conditions in the afternoon with highs 77-82°. There is a 20% chance of showers or thunderstorms in the afternoon or evening.

For the outlook through the rest of the week and into the weekend, scroll on down to Dan's post below.

Tropical Topics

The tropical disturbance off the Georgia/South Carolina coast noted yesterday became the first named storm of the tropical season (which begins officially in the Atlantic on June 1) this morning. A tropical storm watch is in effect from portions of the Georgia coast southward to Flagler Beach, FL. As of the lastest advisory, subtropical storm Andrea was still poorly organized. Top winds were near 45 mph with higher gusts. Movement was erratic, but generally slowly to the west. The heaviest rains are expected to remain offshore for the next 24 hours. The next advisory will be issued at 5pm.

The Weather Channel's Stu Ostro has a very nice illustrated discussion of the history of this storm and subtropical storms in general in his blog post this morning.

A subtropical storm (unnamed) formed in the Atlantic as early as Jan. 18 in 1978. Other early-season storms were observed on: 2/2/1952, 3/6/1908, 4/18/2003, 4/21/1992, 5/5/1932, and 5/6/1981. In addition, there have been 17 others in May, including 2 in 1887 and a second one in 1908.