What the forecast actually says
Loading…
Area Forecast Discussions are the real forecasts, written 3 to 4 times daily by NWS meteorologists reading the models and interpreting what they mean for your area. They offer far deeper insight than any weather app, but they're written in dense meteorological shorthand. Plaincast uses Anthropic's Claude to summarize them into plain English, side by side with the annotated original.
Revised in 7 passages since the 12:29 PM discussion. See every revision.
Daily rounds of storms will continue through the weekend. Strong winds gusts and heavy rain causing localized flooding are possible in stronger storms.
Temperatures will warm with heat indices in the low-100s west of the Plateau Friday into early next week.
Tuesday will be the hottest day of the period with heat indices nearing or exceeding 105 degrees for most of the area.
Another day, another crop of showers and thunderstorms. Isolated showers are still ongoing at this hour, but today's activity hasn't been that impressive with only a little lightning produced. This activity will wane once the sun sets, giving us a mainly quiet night. Fog will once again be a concern though, particularly for areas that have received rain today. Look for additional showers & storms to develop by tomorrow afternoon with the typical summertime hazards of lightning and brief heavy rain.
(Rest of today through Friday) Issued at 1108 AM CDT Thu Jul 16 2026
Largely a persistence forecast is underway for Middle Tennessee. Weak synoptic forcing coupled with high moisture content (precipitable water around 2 inches, above the 90th percentile for mid July) has sparked typical summertime convection. These are very slow-moving showers and storms due to the weak steering flow, so localized flooding will be a risk with any heavy downpours. Temperatures will hold steady near normal today, but be on the lookout for a warmer pattern change starting Friday. As a 594 dam midlevel ridge starts to encroach on the southeastern CONUS Friday afternoon, temperatures begin their slow climb.
(Friday Night through next Thursday) Issued at 1108 AM CDT Thu Jul 16 2026
We should stay below Heat Advisory criteria (heat index of 105F+) through the weekend, but will start seeing more frequent heat indices in the triple digits. chance of rain are also on the rise this weekend as a result of a few shortwave systems embedded in the main flow. A more noteworthy feature is forecast to sweep through Saturday evening, bringing a wave of showers and perhaps a few stronger thunderstorms through Middle Tennessee. Initial look at the parameter space indicates a very weakly sheared environment, suggesting our primary threat will be damaging winds on the storms' outflows. Lapse rates look quite poor (around 5 degC/km), mitigating the hail threat. Much of the area will see some type of precipitation as this feature moves through late Saturday night, but the bulk of the severe weather threat will be confined to areas along and east of I-24.
The hottest day of the forecast period certainly looks to be Tuesday; midlevel ridging combined with an approaching frontal boundary at the surface will most likely cause muggy air to pool along the south side of the front on Tuesday afternoon. This will lead to dangerous heat and humidity sending heat indices at or above 105 degrees on Tuesday, so we will be monitoring the need for heat headlines. After this front passes, temperatures finally return to near normal in the upper 80s for the remainder of the week.
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. The full Plaincast experience — plain-English summaries beside the annotated original, with the forecast changelog — loads automatically with JavaScript, or open the interactive edition.