Finally, some sun (for most of us) in metro Detroit

DETROIT – Before getting to the forecast, I want to take a moment and briefly clarify something.

By now, you've heard about the unbelievable flooding that hit South Carolina over the weekend. This was NOT directly due to Hurricane Joaquin but, rather, was mostly due to the upper level low pressure area I described last week -- which pumped enormous amounts of moisture into South Carolina, and also created an outstanding dynamic environment to produce precipitation. The phrase "once every 1000 year rain" has been used to describe this event, but what does that mean?

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Contrary to what you think, it does NOT mean that this extraordinary amount of rain can only happen once every 1000 years. Rather, it means that there's a 1 in 1000 chance of this magnitude event occurring in South Carolina -- i.e., there's a 0.001% chance of this happening. It could happen again next year, 25 years from now, or five hundred years from now. But what happened this past weekend was an exceedingly rare event.

Fortunately, we have much quieter weather to deal with.

Tonight we'll see clouds increasing once again, with some fog possible later at night. Lows in the mid 50s (13° Celsius for our Canadian neighbors). Wind will become calm air.

After a cloudy start on Tuesday, we should start to see a gradual break up in the cloud cover. Hopefully, most of us will see at least partial sunshine during the afternoon. Highs near 70° (21° Celsius), with a light and variable wind.

Tuesday's sunrise is at 7:36 AM, and Tuesday's sunset is at 7:07 PM.

Mostly clear Tuesday night, with lows in the mid 50s.

Partly cloudy on Wednesday, with highs near 70°.

Mostly clear Wednesday night, with lows still in the mid 50s.

Increasing clouds on Thursday, with highs again near 70°.

Showers develop Thursday night, with lows in the upper 50s (15° Celsius).

We'll probably see lingering showers into the first half of Friday, before skies become partly cloudy. Highs in the low to mid 60s (17° Celsius).

At this point the weekend appears dry, with mostly sunny or partly cloudy skies, and highs in the low 60s (16° Celsius) on Saturday, and into the mid 60s (18° Celsius) on Sunday. Overnight lows will be in the 40s.

**A SPECIAL SAVE-THE-DATE NOTE FOR YOUR CALENDAR: This Wednesday at 12:30 PM, I'll conduct my second Climate Change Webcast to bring you up to speed on the latest information about global warming. This will be a live broadcast that you can see only on ClickOnDetroit.com, there will be no script, and no advocacy. I will just present facts and, as with my first climate change webcast, you can ask me questions by submitting them Wednesday morning on the Local 4 Facebook page. I'll try to answer as many as I can, and try to keep this to a half-hour to make it manageable for those of you at work. Last time, so many of you were watching and asking questions that we extended it an extra fifteen minutes! Hope to see you Wednesday…