Warm fall temps ahead of stormy weekend

You're watching the Fox 10 Weather Experts with meteorologist Erica Horvathin on Fox 10 News. Welcome back. It is a stunner this evening across the state and we're seeing the sunset here in the valley. It's getting that golden hue on the horizon in the high country. It's turning those fall colors even more golden. So a beautiful night after a beautiful day. Our temperatures were near normal today and we saw a high of 87 degrees in Phoenix, just two degrees above average. So no complaints for today's weather, especially with all of that sun and light winds. You just can't beat it this time of year. And right now we are still at 85 degrees in Phoenix and those mid-80s across all of the southern and western deserts. Up in the high country, we're at 54 in Flagstaff, 64 in Sedona, 61 in Show Low. And we saw near normal high temperatures in the high country today as well. It's been a little breezy at times up north, but those winds are starting to subside. and they'll continue to lighten up as the sun goes down. We still do have a couple more dry days in store this coming week before we do see our next big weather pattern change and rain moves in. Dry air is still coming in from the west for our Wednesday, so it is going to be a mostly to partly sunny day. Dry skies for all. We'll just start to see some high cloud cover at times. And going into our Thursday, we do start to pull up much more substantial moisture, And you can expect those skies to turn overcast on Thursday. However, we are not expecting rain yet on Thursday. It'll be another dry day. Friday is when we'll see our next chance for rain all across Arizona as a disturbance crosses through the state. It looks a little drier on Saturday, as you can see here, before the next storm moves in from the west coast on Sunday. And that's going to be an even bigger storm system. an atmospheric river expected to stream in that moisture from the Pacific and just bring some really widespread rain. Friday, we're not going to be quite as wet as we will be on Saturday night through Sunday. The first storm on Friday is going to bring scattered showers and thunderstorms with some isolated heavy downpours. And we'll see those throughout the deserts and a lot of the high country. But Saturday night to Sunday, that atmospheric river pulls in moisture. We're expecting widespread showers and some weak thunderstorms. Nothing too crazy in terms of storms. There is still some uncertainty as to just how much rain is going to fall, but it is expected to be more than the Friday storm. It's just a matter of is it going to be a half an inch in the valley or is it going to be closer to an inch and a half? So it'll be a lot of rain, that's for sure. Here's a look at the timing of that rain and luckily the chance is lowest for Halloween. So it does go down to a 20 percent chance on Saturday. That means that for trick-or-treating should be pretty good. A higher chance for rain in the mountain terrain than we have here in the valley. And then Saturday night pretty late through Sunday is when we'll see that 60 to 70 percent chance. As for the high country it's looking pretty similar. A really high chance for rain Friday, it goes down for Halloween to around a 10% chance, and then back up Saturday night through Sunday. So plan accordingly. There is that chance on Saturday for Halloween, but it's low. As for our temperatures, 63 tonight in Phoenix, 48 in Sedona, and 34 in Flagstaff. And tomorrow, temperatures are looking pretty similar to today. No big changes tomorrow other than a little bit more cloud cover in store at times. Thursday again going to be pretty cloudy but temperatures stay level and Friday is when we'll see rain and a big drop in our temperatures falling by about 10 degrees and they just keep falling more as we go through our weekend. Halloween 79 will be our high but Sunday 72 degrees. We could see some rain carrying over into Monday but then we'll dry out next week with highs in the upper 70s.