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7-Day Forecast
Today
Jul 24
1%
82°
63°
Sat
Jul 25
3%
86°
66°
Sun
Jul 26
26%
89°
71°
Mon
Jul 27
38%
92°
73°
Tue
Jul 28
57%
89°
69°
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Today
Jul 24
Sat
Jul 25
Sun
Jul 26
Mon
Jul 27
Tue
Jul 28
Next rain: Monday ~3 AM
Light rain Monday night — just a trace total. Slight chance (26%) of storms Sunday per NWS. Dry for the rest of today.
Today
—
Sat
—
Sun
20%
Mon
53%
0.18″
Tue
53%
0.02″
It's mostly clear right now and you can expect a dry stretch through Saturday — Friday and Saturday both look pretty dry according to the forecast. The next rain chance arrives Sunday with a 26% shot at scattered showers and thunderstorms, but the real wet period looks to be Monday and Tuesday, when the National Weather Service is calling for a 38% to 67% chance of showers and thunderstorms across those days, with Monday night and Tuesday looking like the soggiest stretch.
Humidity and storm chances return Sunday as the high shifts east and a more summer-like pattern takes hold.
Sunday
A cluster of storms could push into the Ohio Valley Monday evening, potentially bringing a more active period, though confidence in the details is low at this range.
Monday evening
A quiet, pleasant Friday ahead. Partly sunny skies with a high near 82°F.
Tomorrow
Saturday stays dry and even warmer, topping out around 86°F with mostly sunny skies.
Shorts & tee by afternoon
2:50 AMIssued Jul 24, 2:49 AM
Right now at 3 AM it's still 58 degrees and partly cloudy in Columbus, and that pattern holds through the day. Friday looks dry and pleasant with a high near 82 and just a sliver of a chance for any rain. The partly cloudy skies will break up to partly sunny as a high pressure system keeps things calm and settled. You're finishing out a cool, dry stretch.
What's pushing all this calm weather around is a surface high pressure system that's been building in from the northwest. High pressure is like an invisible dome that keeps storms away and lets dry air settle in. Right now that dome is still overhead, but it's sliding eastward as we head into the weekend. That's the key setup: once it moves away, warmer and more humid air starts streaming north from the Gulf, and that's when the summer pattern flips back on. The upper atmosphere, that river of fast air up around 30,000 feet, will start throwing shortwave troughs (small dips of cold air aloft) through the region, and those disturbances combined with moisture and instability will spark shower and thunderstorm chances by Sunday and especially Monday.
Monday evening into Monday night looks like the most likely window for organized storm activity across the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, possibly as a cluster or even a mesoscale convective system (that's a large complex of storms that can form over a few hours). Confidence is still low on the exact details that far out, but the pattern setup is pretty textbook for late July: high pressure clearing out, tropical moisture returning, and upper-level support moving in. That's classic summer severe weather territory.