Some Precious Liquid Gold Back in Your Forecast

As I stepped outside the station on my dinner break this evening, I smiled as I saw things I have not seen in a while. Namely, rain clouds all around East Texas, a few lightning strikes, and that smell of rain when the ground is already wet. Maybe the best part was feeling the cooler temperatures as a result of the rain cooled air. Now that's what makes summer days feel better, doesn't it?

The rain that we have seen today started during the mid-afternoon hours and has continued well into the evening hours. StormTracker Live Doppler Network still continues to show some pockets of moderate to heavy rain falling in southern Angelina county, near Beulah and Zavalla.

This rain that developed is a sign of a weakening high pressure ridge, which has encompassed most of the state for the past couple of months.

With high pressure weakening and moving to the north, that will open up the door for some showers and storms to return to East Texas.

The showers and storms will form along a surface trough and upper level disturbance on Friday and then again on Saturday. This disturbance had been producing widespread rain over southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana the past couple of days. It has now finally shifted further to the south and west, leading to some rain today in our neck of the woods. Our Futurecast computer model shows more scattered thunderstorms developing on your Friday as the disturbance lingers over East Texas.

Due to this feature alone, we may not only see rain in the afternoon hours, but could possibly see some development overnight and into the early morning hours as well. That is why rain chances have gone up to 40%.

As you might imagine, the rain chances won't stay high for long. Once this surface boundary and upper air disturbance moves away, the rain chances will drop to 20% late this weekend, which means the odds of you getting a cooling rain shower go way down.

As always, you can track the rain on your computer any time of day. Just go to www.ktre.com/weather to view our live streaming radar and Interactive radar. Hopefully we will all get a little precious liquid gold from Mother Nature this time around.