PM Update: A warm-up arrives Thursday, with temperatures near 70 in some spots.

Less breeze, less sunshine, with temperatures near 60 degrees this afternoon — if you’re thinking it seemed like a typical mid-November day, you’d be right! Clouds should thicken a bit tonight but should clear out before dawn. Tomorrow looks sunny, calm and fantastic — assuming you like temperatures near 70 degrees in many spots.

Through Tonight: Clouds may thicken up through midnight into mostly cloudy conditions, but should clear by dawn. Temperatures will steadily fall through the 50s and 40s, toward sunrise low temperatures are expected to be in the mid- to upper 30s. A couple southwesterly breezes may gust near 15 mph before midnight, then calm during the early morning.

Tomorrow (Thursday): We’ll have sunshine galore, with clouds hard to come by. High temperatures are expected to rise about 10 degrees into the mid-60s to perhaps around 70 degrees in some spots. Helping this warm-up will be continued, light south-southwest breezes. Overnight, we should stay mild and clear until just before dawn, when low temperatures should merely dip into the low to mid-40s.

Nearby smoke plume causing unhealthy air quality in Virginia

A cluster of smoldering hot spots in the Jefferson National Forest northwest of Lynchburg is sending a smoke plume up the Interstate 81 corridor and causing Code Red (unhealthy) air quality in Staunton and Harrisonburg. The hot spot cluster was detected Wednesday morning by satellite. It has yet to be deemed an official wildfire blaze, but often these reports and identifications are delayed, lagging indicators.

We could even smell some of this smoke, perhaps with a slight and brief degradation in our air quality, Thursday morning in the D.C. are. This near-surface smoke animation below has the worst of the smoke focused on the I-81 corridor Wednesday night before beginning to disperse nearer to Washington in the morning.

Our local National Weather Service office is concerned about low relative humidity values, recent drought conditions and southerly winds resulting in “an elevated risk for wildfire spread in Virginia through early this evening.” The depicted blaze in central Virginia, the Quaker Run fire, has increasing containment levels and so far isn’t expected to be a major issue in the near-term.