Arizona weather: Warm Thursday, strong weekend winds

All right, welcome back Tempe Town Lake. Dark and early this morning. Couple cars on that bridge over Mill. We are looking at conditions that are going to be pretty dry today, but also warming up. Not this morning. It's chilly out there. We're at 61 degrees right now in Tempe. Winds are calm. But as the afternoon goes on, unlike the last few days where we were staying in the 70s, today we're firmly back into the 80s. We're talking like upper 80s expected. Fox Vision shows off those dry conditions on the map. Right now there's nothing going on. This is the future cast as to how things will be playing out as we move forward though. Area low pressure cold front that impacted us a couple of days ago has been continuing to trek eastward, creating stormy weather as it's moved across the country, and it will continue to move farther and farther along to the east. Now here's what's interesting. The cold front itself is still going to be slightly influencing us, so by Friday into Saturday, some cold air kind of seeps in on the backside of that cold front, which is in some ways a backdoor cold front. That's when a cold front actually sweeps across the state from east to west instead of west to east, which is more typical. But either way, you're getting a little bit of that cold air that's coming in from actually over to the east. And at the same time, an area of low pressure sets up to the southwest, which is going to wrap in some more mild moist air coming from the south. And the combo effect is we turn windy, we turn a bit more humid again, and we are going to see that chance for showers start to uptick as we head into the weekend. So this is the look at our futurecast more closely for the weekend. Here's your Friday afternoon. Isolated chances down in far southern Arizona. Just a few clouds. Then there's your Saturday morning to afternoon. More cloud coverage and looking at a mostly cloudy sky on your Saturday. And see how these showers start to creep up from the south. Some of the computer models try to keep it south, but some do that, bring a few up towards the valley. So there's at least a low chance of a shower or two making its way towards the valley as we head into Saturday evening. And if it can make it, some lingering showers into your Sunday morning to afternoon as well. I think particularly the higher elevations on Sunday, but an isolated chance again is possible in the Phoenix area. Here's the look at the wind forecast next couple of days as these winds are starting to increase with this changing pattern. So we're looking at 15 to 25 mile per hour gusts today, 30 to 40 mile per hour gusts on your Friday. And then in Flagstaff, look at this, 30 to 40 today and by tomorrow we're looking at 40 to 45 mile per hour gusts, maybe creeping towards that 50 mile per hour gust range. There are already quite a few wind advisories or even high wind warnings up around the state, not specifically in the valley or specifically over Flag at this point, but just around the state there are wind warnings already because of the concern for how windy it'll be heading Friday into Saturday. A look at our forecast high temperatures today, 89 degrees in Phoenix, 67 in Winslow, and 55 in Flagstaff. And then a look at that 10-day forecast shows us our number stays in the upper 80s tomorrow, but slips to the low 80s on Saturday, and then we're back mid-upper 80s Sunday into Monday with lingering rain chances into next week.