Friday looks spectacular for metro Detroit

DETROIT – If you have been following my forecast this week, you know that we'll see some rain for part of the weekend (details discussed below).

However, there's also some good news in our extended forecast -- a nice stretch of weather coming our way! Read on…

IF skies are partly cloudy to start the day Friday, they'll become mostly sunny before too long. It should be a very nice end of the work week, with highs in the upper 60s, and a southeast wind at 4 to 9 mph.

By the way, if you work downtown and need something to do around lunchtime, don't forget that Friday is Local 4's last Plaza Dayz right here in front of the station at 550 West Lafayette. We'll have BBQ food trucks here with $4 deals just for our party.

And with all of you here, Dr. Frank McGeorge and our Medical Producer Sarah Mayberry have arranged for Be The Match bone marrow registry to be here getting folks registered. The first 50 people who join the registry will get a Live in the D/Local 4 chef's apron! (I really want one of those)

Mostly clear Friday night, with lows in the low 50s.

Saturday is a little tricky. The easy part of the forecast is that we'll warm up nicely…probably into the upper 70s! An approaching cold front will give us a high chance of Saturday NIGHT rain, but some of my computer models are projecting a few random, scattered afternoon showers well ahead of the main event. If they do pop up, many of us probably won't see rain, but some of us might.

Remember that you can monitor things yourself by watching the interactive radar display on the FREE Local4Casters Weather App…just go to the app store and search under WDIV -- it's right there. One more thing about Saturday…it's going to become windy, with wind blowing from the south-southwest at 15 to 25 mph.

As mentioned above, there's a better chance for showers and maybe even a thundershower Saturday night. Lows in the low 60s.

Sunday is also a bit tricky -- I think there still may be some showers in the area Sunday morning. Then a slot of dry air will come in and we'll get some sunshine. Then the upper level system associated with the cold front will approach Sunday afternoon.

If there enough lingering moisture, then we could even get a Sunday afternoon shower, but this is highly uncertain. Highs around 70. Hopefully my computer models will get a better handle on things tomorrow and I'll develop better confidence in the timing of our weekend rain. But for today, this is the best I can do, sorry.

Gradual clearing Sunday night, with lows in the mid 40s.

And now for some great news: the persistent jet stream pattern we've been in -- trough (cooler weather) in the eastern U.S. and ridge (warmer weather) in the west -- looks as if it'll reverse itself. If the long range computer model I'm relying upon (the normally reliable ECMWF) has a good handle on this, the developing upper level ridge of high pressure over the Great Lakes will give us lots of sunshine, and gradually warming temperatures through next week.

By Thursday and Friday, we could be around 70. Not all models share this pattern evolution but, when in doubt, I usually lean toward the ECMWF. And besides, the GFS long range model is looking really funky…I won't consider that data unless I see a few days of consistency in its pattern forecast…and same thing for the GEM model.