Weekend weather: Cloudy and damp Saturday; chance of afternoon thundershowers Sunday

Neither Saturday nor Sunday will be entirely dry across central Virginia, but the second half of the weekend will bring more sunshine than the first.

Clouds hold in place for most of Saturday, and there will be some occasional nuisance showers like we had Thursday and Friday. The rain will be just enough to keep things damp, but a soaking or prolonged rain still is not expected.

After a week’s worth of wind from the northeast in metro Richmond, a change finally takes shape on Sunday. The southwest breezes that develop will allow for more breaks of sunshine for the morning, but a line of showers and thundershowers is expected to develop in the mountains in the early afternoon and wander across central Virginia late in the afternoon or early evening.

Another batch of afternoon showers and thundershowers comes through on Monday, then a nicer couple of days will follow with sunshine, low humidity, and temperatures near normal for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Increasingly, we see a large-scale shift in the weather pattern ahead which favors a hot and humid period for the first time this season. Record highs are typically in the middle 90s this time of year, and while we do not expect it to be that hot every day, afternoon temperatures in the middle 80s to lower 90s will become routine for a few days starting next weekend.

If you’ve followed the weather for a while in Virginia, you’ve heard of the Bermuda High. It is a broad area of high pressure centered in the western Atlantic which sits in place for most of the summer, and the clockwise flow of air around it brings in high humidity during the summer’s peak.

That Bermuda High will get established for a while starting next weekend. And while this does not mean that summer will be starting early, it will be one of the first prolonged periods of temperatures above normal with higher humidity so far this season.

If you’ve had air conditioning on your mind, or wondered when you may have to get it serviced, your time is coming next weekend.

Lunar eclipse update(tncms-asset)807d6c4f-3e73-5140-9e23-2797203c85cd[1](/tncms-asset)

Scattered afternoon thunderstorms Sunday are forecast to clear during the early evening, so we expect a better than 50-50 chance that the sky will be clear enough to see the eclipse Sunday night. The best time to be on the lookout will be between 11:30 Sunday night and 12:30 Monday morning.