Forecast Last Updated at Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 7:51PM

Winds Begin to Calm; Sunday Looking Nice

Tropical Storm Hanna made landfall this morning right along the NC/SC border as a strong tropical storm and moved quickly up the Atlantic seaboard. Other than few extra clouds and breezy conditions, Hanna impacts remained well to our east. High pressure takes control for Sunday and Monday, before a cold front impacts our weather Tuesday. Hurricane Ike remains a strong and dangerous storm. More on the tropics can be found in the forecast discussion below.

Two community events will benefit from Hanna exiting early Saturday: Daniel Boone Days and the High Country Bluegrass Festival. See our hourly forecast for both events.

The winning photos in the 2009 RWC Calendar Contest have been named. Thanks to everyone for 870 entries this year. Calendars should be available for sale by October 1.

Saturday Hi: 72 Lo: 58 Partly cloudy overnight; NW wind 5-15 mph with higher gusts

Sunday Hi: 82 Lo: 55 Scattered clouds; Pleasant; Light wind

Monday Hi: 82 Lo: 59 Partly cloudy; A stray PM t-shower possible; South wind 5-10 mph

Tuesday Hi: 79 Lo: 58 A mix of sun and clouds; Scattered PM t-showers

Wednesday Hi: 75 Lo: 56 Mostly to partly cloudy; Continued risk for scattered t-showers

Further Out

Thursday - Partly cloudy; An afternoon t-shower possible; High in the mid 70s; Low in the upper 50s
Friday - A mix of sun and clouds; Watch for a t-shower or two in the afternoon; High in the mid 70s; Low in the upper 50s

Forecast Discussion

The tropics continue to dominate our weather discussions and keep our attention, while our weather here at home continues to be fairly quiet.

Other than a few extra clouds and breezy conditions, impacts from Hanna remained well to our east. The heaviest and most concentrated areas of rain remained east of Winston-Salem, with only an isolated shower or two successful in making it into the High Country early Saturday morning. After making landfall along the NC/SC border, Hanna has picked up speed as expected and continues to race up the Mid-Atlantic shoreline.

As Hanna moves north, all attention is turning to Ike, which continues to be a major hurricane with maximum sustained winds well over 100 mph, making Ike a category 4 storm (as of Saturday evening). Fluctuations in Ike's strength are likely over the next few days. Now less than 100 miles from Grand Turk Island, Ike will move through the southern Bahamas tonight and Sunday, making a landfall on the northern side of Cuba Sunday night. Ike is expected to remain over Cuba through Tuesday, drastically weakening the hurricane compared to his current strength. By midweek, Ike will emerge into the Gulf of Mexico, still a strong hurricane and could regain strength over the warm waters of the Gulf. From there, his path is less certain, forcing all of the Gulf coast to once again be on high alert for another possible landfalling hurricane.

Back closer to home, as the remnants of Hanna move off to the north, high pressure will take control of our weather for Sunday and Monday, providing a nice start to the new work week. The only hiccup might be a stray t-shower or two Monday afternoon. By Tuesday, an easterly flow will take over and will combine with a cold front coming in from the west. The interaction of those two will be enough to spark off a better chance for a few showers and thundershowers both Tuesday and Wednesday. Those chances decrease for Thursday, before another front will bump them back up by Friday.

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--Roaring Gap 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.