Weather

MONDAY WEATHER: ☀️ Another stretch of beautiful weather begins today. We’ll start a little cool for this time of year, only getting to about 63° today before dropping to 40° tonight. But a nice warming trend begins tomorrow with temperatures pushing into the mid 70s. We’ll be in the low 80s by Thursday, and each day should be dry and sunny. Winds will be light through tomorrow, before picking up some in the middle of the week. There’s a very slight chance of rain showers on Friday.

⛈️ THE WEEKEND: A wet weekend may be in store for us, with widespread showers and thunderstorms beginning Friday and continuing through Sunday. This has the potential to be the kind of soaking rain we’ve needed for weeks, with 1.5 to 2 inches of rain currently looking possible. This is an evolving situation and the details may change, but for now it looks like rain and thunderstorms, potentially heavy at times, will be possible throughout the weekend.

⛈️ FURTHER OUT: The Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a cooler-than-average, wetter-than-average pattern through the first few days of May, with a “slight risk” for heavy precipitation from April 26 through April 28.

💧 RIVER CONDITIONS: The Big South Fork River has dropped to a streamflow of less than 340 cubic feet per second (cfs), easily a record for this time of year. The norm is about 1,400 cfs. Further upstream, Clear Fork has dropped to a summer-like flow of 85 cfs, nearing a record set in 1963. The norm there is nearly 450 cfs this time of year. Water clarity is very good, and water temperatures are warming into the low 70s during the peak of afternoon heating. Streamflows will continue to slowly decline over the next several days. For paddlers, the National Park Service maintains a description of river levels here: https://www.nps.gov/biso/planyourvisit/riverlevels.htm