The first record of 2023 is in the books. The books may need to be rewritten again today

Remember when wind chills were below zero with multiple sub-freezing mornings in a row? Yeah, the exceptional cold from mid-December seems like a distant memory, especially since we’re on a 14 day streak of warmer-than-normal high temperatures. Tuesday was the first day that the stretch of warmth produced a record. The Waco Airport warmed to 83°, shattering the record of 81° set in 2017. A near 120 year old record could be challenged today. Today’s record high temperature is 84°, set in 1905, and we’re forecasting to reach the low-to-mid 80s again late this afternoon. Temperatures this morning are starting in the upper 50s and low 60s (with a few straggling low-50s out there) and will warm up quickly once the morning cloudiness clears. Thanks to south winds gusting near 30 MPH this afternoon, late day highs should reach the low-to-mid 80s. Temperatures east of I-35 could be only in the upper 70s thanks to the potential for some patchy morning fog and a few extra clouds overhead.

Despite the occasional cloudiness today, our next front will blow through without any rain because the atmosphere is just too darn dry! It’s possible, but highly unlikely, for a stray shower or two to form as the front passes east of I-35 after midnight tonight, but we’ll all sleep through the frontal passage. We’ll wake up Thursday to, finally, some seasonable weather! Morning temperatures in the mid-to-upper 40s are still a little warmer than normal (since the front isn’t getting here fast enough to drop temperatures by dawn), but our afternoon highs will reach the upper 50s and low 60s! Tomorrow’s average high is 59° so it’s entirely possible that we’ll break the ongoing streak of warmer-than-normal highs at 15 days. Temperatures won’t be any warmer Friday despite returning sunshine and mostly calm winds thanks to a near-freezing morning low. We’ll stay close to freezing again Saturday morning, but gusty south winds will pull temperatures up a bit Saturday and up a lot more into the low-to-mid 70s Sunday. We only have two chances for rain over the next 10 days. The first chance, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday, is only at a 20% chance, but a 30% chance of rain may return by Wednesday.

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