Forecast Last Updated at Friday, August 29, 2008 at 12:08PM

Traditional Late-August Weather

Sunshine returns today along with a rather steamy feel after all the rain we've had recently. An isolated shower or thundershower is possible up in the mountains, but we should remain dry here in the foothills. Holiday weekend weather is looking pretty good. We'll just have to dodge an afternoon thundershower or two.

Voting in the 2009 Ray's Weather Center Calendar Photo Contest ended August 20. Winners will be announced by September 1.

Friday Hi: 87 Lo: 65 Partly sunny skies; Warmer; Light northerly breezes

Saturday Hi: 89 Lo: 65 Partly cloudy; Very warm & humid; Renegade late-day thunder possible; Light north wind

Sunday Hi: 86 Lo: 64 Scattered clouds; Slight chance for an afternoon or evening t-shower; NE wind 5-10 mph

Monday Hi: 86 Lo: 62 More sunshine than clouds; Warm; Nice weather for Labor Day

Tuesday Hi: 85 Lo: 62 Scattered clouds; Nice weather

Further Out

Wednesday - Plenty of sunshine; Pleasant; High in the mid 80s; Low in the lower 60s
Thursday - More nice weather; Plenty of sunshine; High in the mid 80s; Low in the lower 60s

Forecast Discussion

Skies will be partly sunny today and temperatures will be noticeably warmer than recent days. A cold front will be approaching the Carolinas by late Saturday, moving through early Sunday, and really weakening steadily as it tracks through our area. Isolated thundershowers will be possible both Saturday and Sunday PM, but nothing significant enough to cancel any outdoor plans.

Labor Day and into the middle of next week look dry and quite pleasant. We hope you enjoy your holiday weekend.

In the tropics, Tropical Storm Gustav moved over Jamaica overnight and will gaining strength as it moves northwestward over warm Caribbean waters. Gustav has the potential to detonate and become a major-league hurricane over the next few days as it enters the Gulf of Mexico by late in the weekend. It poses an ultimate threat to the Louisiana/upper Texas coast by early next week. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna was located a couple hundred miles north of the Leeward Islands and will probably become a hurricane by late in the weekend. It's going to be meandering around for several days in the Atlantic, and could potentially impact the Bahamas in about a week from now.

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 and Waynesville were recently added; Black Mountain will be up and running very soon. 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.