Saturday looks to be washout; Threat of severe weather lingers

We’re looking at a soggy start to the weekend on Saturday with a chance for thunderstorms.

Our hope is that the atmosphere stabilizes enough with cool and cloudy weather as to not cause any severe weather. Either way, we’ll see a fair amount of rain throughout the day.

The Triangle is under a level 1 threat of severe weather with Fayetteville and parts of the sandhills under a level 2 threat.

Widespread rain will move in from the southwest during the middle of the morning, roughly 9 or 10 a.m. We’ll see showers continue throughout the afternoon, lowering our chances for storms.

“That should keep our atmosphere stable across the Triangle,” said WRAL Meteorologist Zach Maloch.

The intensity of the rain and whether or not we’ll see storms depends on the timing of a warm front approaching from our south. The front looks to stay just to our south at the North Carolina/South Carolina border. If it lifts more north than expected, that will increase the risk of storms. South Carolina and Georgia are more likely to see storms than we are.

“I would expect this to really be an all-day kind of rain,” WRAL Meteorologist Elizabeth Gardner said. “We can see a half-an-inch to an inch of rain. It’s pretty dry out there so we need this rain.”

WRAL Meteorologist Aimee Wilmoth said the Triangle is about 1.5 inches below the average rainfall amount for April.

“South of that front, the atmosphere is primed and ready for severe weather, north of that front, things are going to be a little bit too stable and very wet,” Maloch said. “We’ll watch that front’s progression through tomorrow.”

“It looks like things across the Triangle are going to stay stable, just a very wet day expected on Saturday,” Maloch said.

Sunday will be a much better day to get outside. We’ll be partly cloudy with highs in the low 70s.