Little Sunshine Miss

Now

Partly Sunny. The decreasing clouds promised by yesterday's PM Update missed the schedule by about 6 hours, but some sun has broken through the overcast in most of the Washington metro area this afternoon. Despite the sun and a more southerly wind component, temperatures are near where they were yesterday at this time, mainly in the upper 60s. The nearest rain is in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Surface weather map and satellite picture at 2pm today from HPC/NCEP/NWS

Tonight and Tomorrow

Increasing clouds, cool. Clouds will increase again tonight as a low pressure area now in the lower Great Lakes approaches from the west with vigorous upper-air support. This will increase the chances of rain during the day tomorrow to 50% by late afternoon. Lows tonight will be near 60 downtown to the mid and upper 50s in the 'burbs; highs tomorrow will be near 69°.

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

Tropical Topics

The newest player on the 2006 tropical scene is Tropical Depression 8. It formed this morning from a tropical wave which moved off the coast of Africa yesterday. Maximum winds of 30 mph increased to 35 mph as of 5pm.

Hurricane Florence is accelerating to the northeast as it becomes extratropical, or as they say in the Great North, "post-tropical". The last tropical advisory was issued at 5pm. Tropical storm warnings are in effect for the eastern peninsulas and southern coast of Newfoundland. Although thousands remained without power this morning, Bermuda was returning to normal today, with minimal damage and no reports of injuries from the storm.

Tropical Storm Gordon continues to move north-northwest in the central Atlantic with maximum winds of 65 mph as of 5pm. It is expected to be no threat to land as it remains east of longitude 60W. (Bermuda is near 65W.)

Mediarology

The excellent PBS NOVA program on Katrina, "The Storm That Drowned a City", is being rebroadcast tonight on WETA, channel 26, at 8pm.

The dcrtv blog reports that weather will be broadcast along with community announcements and emergency information on the new radio station owned by the City of Fairfax on 1650 AM.