First Alert Weather: A little showery through Thursday, then clearing up

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The wettest part of this week is now in the rearview mirror. While we’ll still see some passing showers both Wednesday and Thursday morning, we’re going to start to see a drying trend with a bit more sun.

That will help our temperatures rebound back into the lower 70s on Wednesday and mid 70s on Thursday. Some showers will hang on into Thursday morning before sliding south and more sun returning into the afternoon. Friday looks pretty good, as does the weekend, with dry weather and seasonable temperatures in the 70s. The one thing we’ll be monitoring is how much of an impact will “Helene” have on us here in western New York.

Speaking of Helene, it strengthened into a Tropical Storm Tuesday morning, and is expected to rapidly intensify into a major hurricane over the next two days as it makes its way through the Caribbean and into the Gulf of Mexico.

The latest track has it making landfall in the big bend area in northwest Florida on Thursday, but impacts will be felt up and down the coast, and well inland. Storm surge and wind will be big with this storm, with some fresh water flooding possible from rain, but the storm should be moving along at a decent pace. As it moves inland, the cloud shield will spread northward.

So, while our next system moves out and sun moves in behind it, our sun will be battling the large cloud shield from Helene by Friday and into the weekend. At this point we do NOT have rain in the forecast from Helene’s moisture, but we’ll monitor it for the weekend.